Getting Started with Skier

Welcome to Skier — an opinionated, minimal, and extensible static site generator for modern web projects. This guide will help you get up and running quickly.

What is Skier?

Skier is a modular static site generator (SSG) designed for reliability, extensibility, and minimalism. It powers the ripixel-website and is intended for developers who want full control over their build pipeline without bloat.

• Minimal: No unnecessary dependencies or features.
• Extensible: Add or customize tasks as needed.
• Type-safe: Written in TypeScript, with a focus on maintainability.

Prerequisites

• Node.js: v22.17.0 or later (see .nvmrc and package.json for current version)
• npm: v9 or later

Installation

Install Skier as a dev dependency in your project:

npm install --save-dev skier

Or, to use it globally:

npm install -g skier

Project Structure

A typical Skier-powered site might look like:

my-site/
  src/
    pages/            # Your page templates (e.g., about.html, contact.html)
    partials/         # Shared partial templates (e.g., header.html, footer.html)
    blog/             # Blog posts or content collections (Markdown or HTML)
    static/           # Static assets (images, fonts, etc.)
  skier.tasks.js      # Skier pipeline config
  package.json
  public/             # (Generated) Output site
  ...

Minimal Configuration

Create a skier.tasks.js (or .ts/.cjs) file at your project root:

// skier.tasks.js
const { generatePagesTask, generateItemsTask, copyStaticTask } = require('skier/builtins');

module.exports = [
  generatePagesTask({
    pagesDir: 'src/pages',
    partialsDir: 'src/partials',
    outDir: 'public',
  }),
  generateItemsTask({
    itemsDir: 'src/blog',
    template: 'src/pages/blog-post.html', // or your preferred template
    partialsDir: 'src/partials',
    outDir: 'public/blog',
  }),
  copyStaticTask({
    staticDir: 'src/static',
    outDir: 'public',
  }),
];

Running Skier

Add a script to your package.json:

"scripts": {
  "build": "skier"
}

Then build your site:

npm run build

Next Steps

• Explore built-in tasks for feeds, sitemaps, CSS bundling, and more.
• You’ll define your build pipeline as an array of tasks in a config file (usually skier.tasks.cjs). Each task does one thing—copy static files, render pages, generate a feed, etc. You can use any of the built-in tasks, or write your own. See the Built-In Tasks page for a full list and details on each built-in.
• Customize your pipeline by adding or writing custom tasks.
• See the Configuration and Tasks docs for more details.

Need help? Check out the FAQ or open an issue on GitHub.