zudo-front-builder (zfb)

zfb is a Rust-built static-site engine for TypeScript/JSX projects — millisecond rebuilds, single binary, no cargo needed by end users.

Install without Node

No Node.js required. zfb ships as a self-contained binary — esbuild and Tailwind are included. For the full install guide including Homebrew, Windows, and which features still need Node as an escape hatch, see the Install without Node docs page.

Linux / macOS (curl):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Takazudo/zudo-front-builder/main/install.sh | sh

Pre-1.0 note: there are no stable releases yet — only prereleases (v0.1.0-next.N). Until v0.1.0 ships, the default curl command above will fail to resolve a release; install a prerelease explicitly:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Takazudo/zudo-front-builder/main/install.sh | ZFB_VERSION=latest-prerelease sh

Installs zfb to $HOME/.local/bin/zfb. Set ZFB_INSTALL=/your/path to change the prefix. Set ZFB_VERSION=v0.X.Y to pin a specific release.

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install Takazudo/tap/zfb

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Takazudo/zudo-front-builder/main/install.ps1 | iex

This downloads the x86_64-pc-windows-msvc binary, verifies its SHA-256 checksum, and installs zfb.exe to %LOCALAPPDATA%\zfb\bin\zfb.exe. Set $env:ZFB_INSTALL to change the install root. Set $env:ZFB_VERSION to pin a specific release tag (e.g. v0.2.0) or use latest-prerelease to opt into pre-releases.

Install via npm (Node required)

# Scaffold a new site
pnpm create zfb@latest my-site

# Or add zfb to an existing project
pnpm add -D @takazudo/zfb

@takazudo/zfb ships a prebuilt Rust binary per platform via npm optional-deps — no cargo or Rust toolchain required. Because the package declares engines.node >=22.0.0, npm-channel users will see a warning if their Node version is older than 22; the binary itself still runs, but the warning is harmless.

pnpm 11 note: pnpm 11's minimumReleaseAge may install a previous release of create-zfb within ~48h of any new release. If create-zfb warns about a stale install at startup, re-run with pnpm create zfb@latest --config.minimumReleaseAge=0 or npm create zfb@latest.

Why Rust?

Rust makes the framework itself fast, memory-safe, and distributable as a single binary — see the architecture doc (or the docs site) for the full rationale.

What zfb is

zfb is the engine: router, renderer, content pipeline, and the small set of build-time primitives (frontmatter extraction, content collections, paths(), MDX directive registry, non-HTML page emission, and the PageMeta head/asset contract) that a framework can build on. Frameworks like a future zudo-doc-v2 sit on top of these primitives and own the opinionated layer — sidebar generation, search, theming, blog conventions, i18n routing, versioning UI, and so on.

zfb is the engine for content sites whose hard parts live outside page rendering — build-time data pipelines, custom content collections, project-specific glue. For sites whose hard parts are page rendering itself (multi-framework, ISR, RSC, server actions), use Astro or Next. See concepts/choosing-zfb.mdx for the longer answer.

The full pipeline ships today: embedded V8 host, zfb.config.ts config loader, syntect-backed syntax highlighting, islands pipeline, client router with view transitions, content-collection bridge, and dev-server are all wired.

Docs site

The documentation site lives under docs/ and is published at https://takazudomodular.com/pj/zudo-front-builder/.

Limits

zfb build reads every configured content collection and builds an in-memory ContentSnapshot embedded into the worker bundle that the V8 host loads at build time. For typical project sizes (documentation sites, blogs, hundreds of MDX files) this fits comfortably in default memory. Very large content sets (tens of thousands of entries or entries with multi-megabyte bodies) will push V8 RSS up linearly with snapshot size.

To inspect the snapshot footprint of a build:

ZFB_DEBUG_SNAPSHOT=1 pnpm exec zfb build
# prints: content snapshot: 187 entries / 412 KB

Contributing

See BUILDING.md for the toolchain, first-build setup, and local development workflow.

This repo uses git worktrees for parallel development. Pushing from a worktree is forbidden — child agents commit locally and the manager session merges and pushes from the repo root. See CLAUDE.md for the full worktree-push policy.

For general contribution guidelines (formatting, CI, toolchain requirements), see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 Takeshi Takatsudo.