Pandoc Pack

Convert Markdown to ASW-styled HTML — task lists, callouts, and wikilinks become data-attributes automatically.

The site-builder story

ASW is not just a CSS file you link. It is a complete pipeline: an agent writes Markdown, the pandoc pack converts it to HTML, and the output is a fully styled page using ASW semantics — with zero classes required, zero manual HTML authoring.

content/note.md  ──(pandoc + asw.lua + asw.html5)──▶  docs/note.html

The pack is what makes the vault a CMS. Write in Obsidian, publish with ./build.sh site.

Semantic mapping

The Lua filter converts GFM Markdown constructs to ASW data-attribute HTML:

Callout aliases: [!CAUTION] → warning, [!IMPORTANT] / [!INFO] → note, [!DANGER] → error.

Task lists

- [x] Build the CSS framework
- [x] Wire pandoc pack into build.sh
- [ ] Write the docs
- [ ] Publish to npm

• Build the CSS framework
• Wire pandoc pack into build.sh
• Write the docs
• Publish to npm

Callouts

> [!NOTE]
> The pack requires pandoc 3.x. Earlier versions may handle GFM differently.

> [!WARNING]
> Wikilinks generate `href="#slug"` anchors. Link resolution is a build-time concern — the pack does not validate whether the target exists.

Wikilinks

See [[philosophy]] for why ASW chose this approach.
The [[pandoc pack|pack]] converts vault notes to web pages.

See philosophy for why ASW chose this approach. The pack converts vault notes to web pages.

Frontmatter → page metadata

YAML frontmatter maps to page-level properties via the asw.html5 template:

---
title: "Session Report — 2026-04-02"
description: "Summary of what happened"
layout: prose          # → data-layout on <main> (default: prose)
status: done           # → data-status badge in header
date: 2026-04-02       # → <time datetime="...">
section: "Sessions"    # → eyebrow text above <h1>
tags:
  - session
  - autonomous
# Agent authorship (optional):
agent: vigilio
model: claude-sonnet-4-6
mode: autonomous       # → <span data-mode="autonomous">
session: 10
---

Unset keys produce no output — no empty elements in the rendered HTML.

Command-line usage

Standalone, without build.sh:

pandoc input.md \
  --from gfm+yaml_metadata_block \
  --lua-filter packs/pandoc/asw.lua \
  --template packs/pandoc/asw.html5 \
  --to html5 \
  -o output.html

The +yaml_metadata_block extension enables YAML frontmatter parsing.

With build.sh

build.sh site processes content/docs/**/*.md and content/examples/**/*.md automatically. The template is selected from the frontmatter template: field (default: page).

./build.sh site    # compile all content/ → docs/
./build.sh all     # CSS + site in one pass
./build.sh watch   # rebuild on file change (requires inotify-tools)

Source lives in content/. Built output lands in docs/. Never edit docs/*.html directly — edits will be overwritten on the next build.

Files

packs/pandoc/
├── asw.lua      Lua filter — task lists, callouts, wikilinks
├── asw.html5    Pandoc HTML5 template — page structure, frontmatter vars
└── README.md    Reference documentation

The vault-as-CMS model

The pandoc pack is what enables the vault-as-CMS workflow:

1. Agent writes a note in ~/.napkin/knowledge/ — standard Markdown with wikilinks, tasks, callouts
2. The note is synced or copied to content/docs/
3. build.sh site converts it to a styled HTML page
4. nginx serves it from docs/

No CMS. No database. No admin interface. The vault IS the content management system. The pack is the bridge between how agents write and how the web renders.