Martin Donath

Studio has crossed 1,000 weekly active users! 🚀 Four months into our beta, it's great to see Studio becoming part of more technical documentation workflows. Thanks to everyone using Studio, sharing feedback, and helping us make it better for everyone ❤️ zensical.org/studio/

Sunday – funday: screen of my wife's MacBook broke. iPad via Sidecar to the rescue. Blindly navigating through display settings with Voiceover to enable mirroring – wow, that was hard – then built a keyboard shortcut and auto-connector with Codex. Accessibility is hard.

Material for MkDocs 9.8.0 raises dependency minimums to address known vulnerabilities. Python 3.11+ is now required. Please upgrade and update your lockfiles. Critical maintenance continues until May 5, 2027. github.com/squidfunk/mk...

We're putting the finishing touches on Zensical 0.1.0, just two weeks away! This release brings another round of MkDocs compatibility improvements as we remove the remaining differences in behavior. Very excited for what's coming!

Zensical 0.0.68 is out, adding support for audio and video. github.com/zensical/zen...

In this week's Zensical Monthly, we'll share more on Spark Community, launching November 5. We're rebuilding Spark from scratch for great UX, fast feedback, Open Source collaboration, and early access – shaped by a decade of building in the open. zensical.org/about/newsle...

Zensical's logo got accepted into Simple Icons! This means you'll be able to use it in badges once the next version is out ☺️ github.com/simple-icons...

MkDocs 1.x is now closed to outside contributions. Meanwhile, six new MkDocs 2.0 pre-releases have been published to PyPI. We've updated our article to reflect the latest developments, what they may mean for your projects, and how you can start planning: squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-mater...

Zensical 0.0.67 is here ✨ MkDocs-compatible social cards lead this release, alongside exclude and llmstxt plugins. Enjoy! Release notes github.com/zensical/zen...

Working hard on the new Zensical Spark experience – just one more month until Spark Community launches on November 5! 🤫 One of the first members-only early-access features will be our new Rust-based Markdown parser. Builds are about to get fast. ⚡ zensical.org/spark/

Full circle! 🔄 Python-Markdown – the very foundation MkDocs was built on – is now using Zensical for its own documentation 💛 python-markdown.github.io

Big thanks to all individuals who have already reserved Studio Pro / Studio Pro + Spark Community! ❤️ Your contribution helps us make Zensical sustainable and stay independent, so we can keep building it in the open without having to compromise. 🚀 zensical.org/upcoming-cha...

🤫 Fewer and fewer reasons to stay on MkDocs – switch to Zensical, an actively maintained stack.

🤫 If you'd like to support our work – and get a really nice editing experience for Zensical and MkDocs, plus early access to what we're building next – check out our early supporter offer for Studio Pro and Spark Community 🚀 zensical.org/upcoming-cha...

Many of you have been waiting for this one: Zensical 0.0.64 ships a drop-in replacement for the Material for MkDocs blog plugin – enjoy! github.com/zensical/zen...

5x faster. 80% fewer tokens. Agents should edit intent, not chase references. In three paired runs, Studio also cut direct file edits by 90% while updating every affected link. We're bringing this to Zensical Studio in the coming weeks. zensical.org/studio/

Pretty happy with how yesterday went, and we're already back at it ☺️ Just released: 0.2.17 makes Connections easier to explore: – Expand all connections – Open targets directly or to the side – Reveal assets in your file explorer zensical.org/studio/

We've put a lot into this – really happy to finally share it with you ☺️

We are extending critical maintenance for Material for MkDocs by six months, through May 5, 2027. This gives you more time to evaluate the migration path, test Zensical with your existing projects, and plan a controlled transition. github.com/squidfunk/mk...

After link validation, this is probably one of the most useful features we've added to Zensical Studio. Keeping incoming links intact as documentation evolves sounds simple, but involves many interesting edge cases. This was a lot of fun to build.

Great movie, even better soundtrack www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oee5...

I really love where this is going: one unified model of your entire documentation project, from Markdown content to configuration.

That was a lot of work, but I’m very happy with where we landed. 6 MkDocs plugin replacements, a much more efficient build architecture, and a solid foundation for what comes next!

We reduced memory use by 8x in 0.0.54. The next release cuts it another ~40%. More tomorrow.

Exactly two years after MkDocs 1.6.1 – the last release of the original MkDocs lineage – there's now an installable MkDocs 2.0 pre-release on PyPI. MkDocs 2.0 is being developed as a ground-up rewrite with a fundamentally different architecture. pypi.org/project/mkdo...

Some people wonder why we’re working on replacing Python Markdown in Zensical. This trace shows why: it occupies ~91% of the cold-build critical path, while the rest of the pipeline fans out across cores. Our Rust parser removes that bottleneck and unlocks parallelism.

Zensical Studio now treats your nav configuration as part of the documentation workspace. Complete pages as you type, catch invalid entries immediately, and keep navigation paths correct when files move. Works with Zensical and MkDocs projects. zensical.org/studio/

We're building Zensical Studio to make the relationships between Markdown pages, reusable content, and assets much easier to understand ☺️

Extremely useful and surprisingly satisfying to watch 60 broken links magically being repaired at once 🪄

Zensical Studio already prevents broken links. Next week, it will help you repair the links that somebody else broke. 😎 zensical.org/studio/

Zensical 0.0.54 is out! – 8-10x reduction in peak memory usage – Invalid autorefs now caught in validation – Better integration with mike (versioning) Release notes: github.com/zensical/zen...

I've changed my mind on AI-generated bug reports. They got genuinely better and helpful. Open Source maintainers: do you share prompts with your users to help an LLM gather data and debug before filing an issue?

We just delivered the Zensical Monthly, July 2026 edition to your inboxes – The tight authoring loop – featuring: Markdown Preview, Markdown Formatter, our new Directives Extension, and more. mail.zensical.org/monthly/2026... Subscribe to Zensical Monthly: zensical.org/about/newsle...

If you work in a large documentation project, the latest Zensical Studio update should feel quite different. Startup, link intelligence, workspace symbols, and diagnostics have all received substantial performance work 🚀

Autorefs are now workspace symbols in Zensical Studio! They support completion, diagnostics, navigation, incoming-reference counts, rename, and safe updates across the entire project. Zensical Studio is available for VS Code: zensical.org/studio/

We keep shipping – Zensical Studio 0.2.6 makes anchors first-class workspace symbols: navigate, validate, rename, and automatically update incoming links across your entire documentation project. Documentation, refactored like code.

Zensical 0.0.52 is out! 🇨🇳🇯🇵🇰🇷 Search now supports Chinese, Japanese, and Korean through locale-aware word segmentation. The release also includes a larger search modal, improved keyboard key styling, and 56 new icons. Release notes: github.com/zensical/zen...

Came across this beautiful Zensical mod ☺️ linguistik.hispanistica.com

Codeberg now bans projects that mostly consist of AI-generated code. It's not yet clear where the line between AI-assisted and AI-generated projects will be drawn, and how it will be enforced. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8cY...

👀 Sneak peek: A Markdown formatter that understands Python Markdown - natively: ✨ Format on save (or edit) ⚡ Extremely fast – written in Rust 🏗️ Integrated into Zensical Studio 👯‍♀️ Works with Zensical and MkDocs projects More about Zensical Studio: zensical.org/studio/

Edit a headline, save – 10 incoming links updated automatically. No need to remember updating them manually. That's Zensical Studio – @zensical.org. Zensical Studio is in public beta and available here: zensical.org/studio/

A much-requested feature is here: Zensical Studio 0.2.0 now provides a live, interactive Markdown preview. It also works with your existing MkDocs projects ☺️

Python Markdown is too strict about link labels. We're working on fixing that in Zensical's new Rust-based Markdown implementation ☺️ No more [`module.symbol`][module.symbol] workarounds.

Material for MkDocs 9.7.7 is out. It fixes a DOM-based XSS issue in the optional search.suggest feature, which was responsibly disclosed to us. Please update. Material for MkDocs will continue receiving security updates through November 5, 2026. github.com/squidfunk/mk...

4 weeks after launching Zensical Studio, Markdown Preview is one of the most requested features – soon, you won't even need to leave the editor to get a truthful preview of your docs. Supports dark mode 🌗 If you haven't, check out Studio: zensical.org/studio/

Zensical Studio is out, and the bigger picture is coming together. We're building the next-generation Docs-as-Code stack, end to end, and we're right on track. More in tomorrow's newsletter. zensical.org/about/newsle...

Now that Zensical Studio is out and humming, I'm picking up work on ZRX again, the heart of Zensical. Working hard on closing the remaining gap to MkDocs, so most projects can move to Zensical in the coming weeks/months ☺️ github.com/zensical/zrx...