CZON - AI-Native Markdown Content Engine

• C: Content oriented | Content is king, focus on content
• Z: Zero Configuration | Zero-configuration writing, minimal distraction
• O: Organic AI-Native | Organically AI-native, deeply integrated with AI
• N: N-shaped Energy Curve | N-shaped energy curve, involved in creation-distribution-feedback at every stage

In the AI era, as website content creators, we can have a smarter content creation engine.

Return to Content: Minimize Distractions, Focus on Writing

Let documentation return to its essence, let writing return to tranquility.

First, I don't want to be a librarian. Sometimes I want to jot down some content, but I might not have thought of a title yet, or haven't formed a specific organization. I hope LLMs will automatically help me generate titles, create summaries, categorize, navigate, and handle other organizational tasks.

Second, my study must be kept clean. I don't want complex build tools, fiddling with complicated documentation configurations, or intricate structures. Every time I see the configuration files and project structures of tools like Docusaurus, VuePress, and Astro, I get a headache. Now, CZON chooses to hide all configurations in the .czon directory, sweeping them into a corner. Users only need to focus on writing content; CZON handles the rest. All other directories are your writing space; you can organize your Markdown files however you like.

Return to Native Language: Write in Your Native Language, Seamlessly Build Multilingual Versions

Life is short; I'm too lazy to translate. People can best leverage the depth of their thinking when using their native language. But staying connected to the world is also necessary; I don't want to give up multilingual communication. So, I wish for a tool that allows me to write in my native language while enabling more people to see my content. Current i18n solutions not only require manual translation but also self-maintenance of content updates, which is too troublesome. I choose to use LLMs to help with translation, saving me a lot of time and enabling one-click translation into multiple languages.

✨ Core Features

1. 🌍 AI Multilingual Translation: Uses AI for incremental translation, allowing users to write Markdown in their native language while the content can be multilingual.
2. 📊 AI Metadata Extraction: Automatically extracts titles, descriptions, summaries, keywords, target audience, URL-friendly aliases, etc.
3. 🏷️ AI Tagging and Categorization: Uses AI to extract and manage tags and categories for content.
4. 🧭 AI Classification and Navigation: Uses AI to generate site maps and navigation; source file location is not sensitive.
5. 🤖 AI Site-wide Summary: Can generate site-wide summaries in various styles.

And some non-AI features:

1. ⚙️ Zero Configuration: All configurations and caches are hidden in the .czon directory, keeping the project structure clean.
2. 🔄 Incremental Build: Detects changes based on content hashes, processing only modified files.
3. 📚 Markdown Extension Support: Natively supports KaTeX math formulas, Mermaid diagrams, Embla carousels, footnotes, etc.
4. 🚀 Static Site Generation: Built-in React-based SSG, generating multilingual static sites.
5. 🌐 Automatic Routing Based on Visitor Language: Automatically routes visitors to the corresponding language version based on their language.

📦 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Node.js installed (LTS version 24 recommended, or version 18 and above, with npx command available)
• OpenAI API Key obtained, or an OpenAI-compatible API Key
• Git installed (used to list Markdown files from Git, ignoring files filtered by .gitignore rules)

Environment Variable Configuration

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-xxxxxx"  # Required: Replace with your OpenAI API Key
export OPENAI_BASE_URL="https://api.openai.com/v1"  # Optional, defaults to the official OpenAI API
export OPENAI_MODEL="gpt-3.5-turbo"  # Optional, defaults to the gpt-3.5-turbo model
export OPENAI_MAX_TOKENS="4096"  # Optional, sets the maximum token limit (if omitted, uses the model's default; for long-text translation, a higher value like 8192 is recommended, depending on the model's maximum supported tokens)

# If you need to use an HTTP proxy to access the OpenAI API, you can set the following variables
export HTTPS_PROXY="http://your-proxy.com:8080"  # Optional, sets HTTPS proxy
export HTTP_PROXY="http://your-proxy.com:8080"   # Optional, sets HTTP proxy

Building a Multilingual Site

Run the following command in any Git-managed folder:

npx czon@latest build --lang zh-Hans --lang en-US

Since language codes will be used for many features in the static site generation, please ensure you use BCP 47 standard language codes. For example, zh-Hans represents Simplified Chinese, and en-US represents American English. You can add more languages as needed, such as es-ES (Spanish), ja-JP (Japanese), ko-KR (Korean), etc. For a list of standard language codes, please refer to IETF language tag - Wikipedia.

Output directory: .czon/dist. You will need to deploy the contents of this directory to a static site hosting platform.

For detailed usage, run npx czon@latest --help.

🔗 Comparison with Other Tools

CZON is positioned as an AI-enhanced content engine, not a full-featured SSG. It focuses on improving content creation efficiency through AI, suitable for creators who prioritize content quality and wish to reduce configuration burden. In fact, CZON can be used in conjunction with SSG tools like Docusaurus, VuePress, and Astro, serving as a front-end engine for content generation and management.

📞 Support

• Project Homepage: https://github.com/zccz14/CZON
• GitHub Issues: https://github.com/zccz14/CZON/issues
• Discord Discussion: https://discord.gg/h3QrCmz24n

Let writing return to tranquility, let content grow naturally.