#542: Zensical - a modern static site generator
From Talk Python To Me by Michael Kennedy
March 25, 2026 · 1h 4m · Episode 542
About this episode
The episode discusses Zensical, a new static site generator developed by Martin Donath in response to changes in MKDocs.
If you've built documentation in the Python ecosystem, chances are you've used Martin Donath's work. His Material for MKDocs powers docs for FastAPI, uv, AWS, OpenAI, and tens of thousands of other projects. But when MKDocs 2.0 took a direction that would break Material and 300 ecosystem plugins, Martin went back to the drawing board. The result is Zensical: A new static site generator with a Rust core, differential builds in milliseconds instead of minutes, and a migration path designed to bring the whole community along.
People in this episode
Host: Michael Kennedy
Topics covered
- static site generator
- Python ecosystem
- documentation
- Rust
- community migration
- differential builds
Keywords
- Zensical
- static site generator
- Python
- documentation
- Rust
- MKDocs
- Material for MKDocs
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: FastAPI, uv, AWS, OpenAI, MKDocs
Products: Zensical, Material for MKDocs
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