We are excited to introduce Vanilla Gorilla! 🦍
Vanilla Gorilla is a minimalist static site compiler that helps you construct high-performance websites without any complex framework overhead. The design philosophy is simple:
- "Vanilla" is the Product: The generated output is pure, standard, highly-optimized HTML, CSS, and client-side JavaScript. There are no runtime frameworks, hydrations, or virtual DOMs.
- "Gorilla" is the Agent: You concentrate on the ideas and content, while your AI coding assistants (like Antigravity IDE) handle the heavy lifting of styling, compilation setup, and page structuring.
How It Works
Vanilla Gorilla parses layout files using simple Server-Side-Includes (SSI) templates:
<!--#include file="templates/header.html" -->
During the pre-deployment compilation phase, the Node.js compiler:
- Flattens template blocks.
- Computes folder directory nesting depth.
- Re-writes relative URLs dynamically so page links resolve correctly regardless of directory depth.
- Compiles Markdown files containing frontmatter into full HTML pages.
- Auto-generates an RSS feed, xml sitemap, and blog listing indexes.
Getting Started
You can run the compiler using standard NPM scripts:
- Install packages:
npm install - Single compile:
npm run build - Watch mode:
npm run watch
Welcome to simple, lightning-fast static compiling!