build.py walks posts/, strips the front matter off the top of each file, runs the rest through a markdown parser, and writes plain HTML into dist/. No database. No framework. No JavaScript. The stylesheet is one file and it fits on a screen.

I already write everything in markdown, in Obsidian. Making the vault the source and the website the output meant I did not have to learn a second place to type. That was the only requirement that mattered.

Why not a real static site generator

I looked at the usual ones first. Hugo, Astro, Eleventy. They all work, and all of them are better than my script at things I do not need: taxonomies, pagination, image pipelines, shortcodes, incremental builds, plugin ecosystems.

What I need is: turn text into a page, sort by date, emit a feed. That is the entire specification. Anything past it is a dependency I will have to maintain in two years while I am busy with something else.

What it costs

Domain, about thirteen dollars a year. Hosting, nothing. The whole site is a few tens of kilobytes, which means it finishes loading before you notice it started.

Feed

RSS lives at /feed.xml. Use it. I am not going to ask for your email.