Content
One folder, any name
Nothing about the site lives outside it, so it travels.
Nineteen sections, fourteen themes
Plain text in. A site worth showing people out.
Zellij is a Next.js engine that reads a folder of YAML and Markdown and builds the whole site — marketing pages and documentation, one deployment.
What you write, and what you get
Four files and a folder of prose. Everything else is the engine's problem.
A folder that describes itself
site.yamlfor identity,menu.yamlfor the bar,pages.yamlfor pages composed from named sections. Point a build at the folder and that is all it needs.
Sections are files
One file per band of content, reusable across pages.
Docs come free
Drop a
_sidebar.yamlin any folder.Fourteen themes, no forks
Every colour, radius, font and easing is a token. Switching theme restyles the site — try the picker in the bar above.
Search included
A build-time index and a ⌘K modal.
Ships as a package
Upgrade by bumping a version.
The pieces
Everything below is documented, typed, and validated at build time.
Sections
Nineteen ways to say something
Heroes, carousels, timelines, galleries, pricing, proof.
Themes
Fourteen glazes
A token system deep enough that themes never touch a component.
Docs
Any folder can be a manual
A sidebar file turns a directory into a documentation tree.
Tooling
Validate before you build
zellij check reads the folder and reports everything wrong with it.
What authoring actually looks like
Declare a page as a list of sections
Pages name sections; sections hold content. A page may reuse the same section twice with a different background, and never restates its words.
Drop a sidebar file to get a manual
Any folder holding _sidebar.yaml becomes a documentation tree with left navigation, breadcrumbs, on-this-page and prev/next. A site can have as many as it likes — one per chapter, if that is what you are building.
Built in
- 18
- Section types
- 14
- Built-in themes
- 100/100
- Lighthouse
- 0
- Runtime dependencies to configure
Change one word. Change everything.
Fourteen themes, and not one component knows about any of them
Colour, type, geometry, shadow and motion are all tokens. Try the theme picker in the bar — this page restyles as you go.
Reasonable questions
Is this a static site generator?
No — it is a package your Next.js app imports. There is no scaffolding step and nothing is generated into your repo, so upgrading is a version bump rather than a merge.
Do I have to write React?
No. A wrapper app is three files and under thirty lines, and none of it changes as your site grows. Everything after that is YAML and Markdown.
What if I already have MkDocs content?
Markdown is Markdown. Point a guide folder at it, add a _sidebar.yaml, and it renders. The PayOS site in this repo was converted from MkDocs sources with a script that only translates admonition syntax.
Can I add my own section type?
Yes — registerSection takes a schema and a component. Built-ins use the same registry, so a custom section is not a second-class one.
What happens when content is wrong?
The build fails, loudly, naming the file, the path inside it, and what was expected. A broken nav link or a missing section file is a build error, not something a visitor discovers.