// the take
This is Eleventy (rebranded as 'Build Awesome'), a static site generator that builds HTML from templates in Markdown, Nunjucks, Liquid, JavaScript, and other formats without imposing a framework or client-side JS runtime. Aimed at developers who want a Jekyll-style tool but written in JS and extensible via plugins.
Mature, heavily tested codebase with separate test suites for Node's test runner, ava, and Vitest browser mode, plus a dedicated benchmark repo for perf regressions. Clean separation of concerns in src/ (Engines, Data, Plugins, Util) makes the internals approachable for people wanting to write plugins or debug template resolution. Multi-template-engine support is genuinely useful if you have a legacy site with mixed Liquid/Nunjucks/Markdown content. Backwards-compatible npm install path (@11ty/eleventy still works) means existing projects aren't forced into a rename.
The README is basically just links out to external docs and marketing channels (Mastodon, Discord, YouTube) with almost zero actual usage example or config snippet in the repo itself — you have to leave GitHub to learn anything. The rebrand to 'buildawesome' mid-project is confusing and the repo doesn't explain why or what the migration path/timeline looks like for the old name. No quickstart code block showing a basic eleventy.config.js or directory structure, which is an unusual omission for a project this popular. Plugin ecosystem is referenced but lives outside this repo, so evaluating what you're actually getting requires hopping to the docs site anyway.
We read the README, the directory tree and a key source file in October 2026. Nobody pays to be listed. How we judge →