Markspresso Docs

Themes and previews

Markspresso supports theme-based rendering so you can switch complete visual systems without changing content.

Enable a theme

Set theme in markspresso.json:

{
  "theme": "tailwind"
}

Then build:

lucli markspresso build

Theme resolution order

For a selected theme name (for example retro-wave), Markspresso resolves files in this order:

Site override paths (paths.layouts, paths.assets)
themes/<theme-name>/ in your site root
themes/<theme-name>/ in the Markspresso module
Final fallback behavior (inline content layout)

For layouts, site-local files win over theme files when both exist.

Theme package structure

A theme typically contains:

theme.json
layouts/home.html
layouts/page.html
layouts/post.html
partials/header.html
partials/footer.html
optional assets/ (for theme-specific CSS/JS/images)

Example:

themes/
  tailwind/
    theme.json
    layouts/
      home.html
      page.html
      post.html
    partials/
      header.html
      footer.html
    assets/
      css/

Built-in themes

Current built-in theme set includes:

default
bootstrap
bulma
tailwind
pico
sakura
simple-css
terminal
css-98
retro-wave

List available themes at any time:

lucli markspresso theme

Explicit list flag:

lucli markspresso theme --list

Selecting a theme quickly

Use theme:

lucli markspresso theme --name=retro-wave

This updates markspresso.json and (by default) builds.

To switch without building:

lucli markspresso theme --name=retro-wave --build=false

Backward-compatible alias:

lucli markspresso previewtheme theme=retro-wave

Generating side-by-side previews for all themes

Use theme --preview:

lucli markspresso theme --preview

This will:

build each theme into docs/_previews/<theme-name>/
generate docs/_previews/index.html with iframe cards for comparison
restore your original markspresso.json after the run

Open:

/_previews/index.html from your static server

You can change the output base directory:

lucli markspresso theme --preview --previewOutDir=docs/_theme-previews

Backward-compatible alias:

lucli markspresso previewallthemes baseOutDir=docs/_theme-previews

Notes for preview mode

Preview builds rewrite root-absolute links (/...) to preview-relative URLs so assets and internal links work inside each /_previews/<theme>/ subdirectory.
previewallthemes also disables site layout overrides during preview generation so each card reflects the selected theme’s own layouts.