// the find
jashkenas/journo
A quick-and-dirty (literate) blogging engine
Journo is a minimal static blog engine written as literate CoffeeScript — the README is literally the source code. It converts Markdown posts to flat HTML files and publishes via rsync. Aimed at developers who want something dead simple and own their publishing pipeline end to end.
The literate programming approach is genuinely interesting: the README and the implementation are the same file, so the documentation can't drift from the code. The feature set is appropriately minimal — Markdown in, static HTML out, rsync to publish, RSS included, no database, no build pipeline beyond npm install. Auto-detecting post title and description from the first heading and paragraph is a sensible default that saves you from maintaining front matter. The preview server reloads the layout on each request, so you see changes without restarting.
Abandoned in 2017 and pinned at version 0.0.1 — the npm package may not even install cleanly on a modern Node due to CoffeeScript and dependencies that have since broken. No front matter support means you can't set custom titles, slugs, or dates without workarounds. The 'retina ready' section literally tells you to handle it yourself. Template variables expose `fs`, `path`, and internal functions directly into every post — a surprising attack surface if you're ever rendering untrusted content.