Customizing Markdown

How zfb renders Markdown and how to configure or extend the pipeline.

zfb’s Markdown pipeline lives in the zfb-content Rust crate. It parses each file, runs a chain of visitors (Core always-on, plus any Opt-in features you enable), highlights code blocks server-side with syntect, and hands each entry back as both a raw body string and a ready-to-render Content component.

For the full list of what the pipeline provides — Core features that are always on, Opt-in features you enable in zfb.config.ts, and how to add your own visitors in-tree — see the Markdown Features category.

Rendering Markdown in a page

The standard pattern is to receive a content entry through paths() and render its Content component:

import { getCollection } from "zfb/content";

export async function paths() {
  const posts = await getCollection("blog");
  return posts.map((post) => ({
    params: { slug: post.slug },
    props: { post },
  }));
}

export default function PostPage({ post }) {
  return (
    <article className="prose">
      <post.Content />
    </article>
  );
}

entry.Content is the JSX component zfb compiles from your Markdown. It renders MDX-aware output including syntect-highlighted code blocks and any custom directives you have registered. If you only need the raw markdown source (for example, to compute a summary or feed an RSS generator), reach for entry.body instead.

Extension points

The plugins: [] field in zfb.config is the build-orchestration plugin system. Each registered plugin exposes three optional hooks — preBuild, postBuild, and devMiddleware — for tasks like emitting extra files alongside the build, running post-build verification, or adding routes to the dev server. Plugins do not participate in Markdown rendering: the parse and visitor chain run inside the Rust engine and never call back into npm-installed plugins.

Markdown-pipeline customisation lives in-tree as MdastVisitor / HastVisitor implementations on the engine side. See Extending the Markdown Pipeline.

See also

• Markdown Features — full catalog of Core and Opt-in features.
• Custom Directives — register new directive names against the DirectiveRegistry, no Rust required.
• Extending the Markdown Pipeline — write a Rust visitor and wire it into the engine.