I’ve been using Jekyll since 2009 (17 years at time of writing!) and it remains my favourite way to publish on the web.
Jekyll’s appeal lies in its philosophy. Your content lives on disk as plain files, they get generated into a static site, and that generated site can be pushed to any web server. No databases, no admin panels, and your blog posts still get pretty permalinks. The elegance of Jekyll’s build system proves you don’t have to give up polished detail to have a static site.
However, the same can’t be said for Jekyll’s blogging experience. Writing with Jekyll means opening a text editor, manually handling files, manually placing images, and running the preview server from the terminal. None of these steps are difficult, but they interrupt the flow of writing. This makes Jekyll’s blogging experience feel less refined than platforms like Substack of WordPress.
Using OpenCode and GPT 5.3 I wanted to see if Jekyll’s build system could be paired with macOS’s user interface to create a polished writing experience. The result is a new, local-only, Mac-arsed editor designed for Jekyll called JekyllStudio. Simply open it and start writing.
Jekyll uses a filename convention where the date and slug are part of the filename. This filename becomes the post’s permalink so if you change your post’s title or date you’ll need to edit the filename to match.
In JekyllStudio, press the “New Post” button and start writing. A correctly formatted filename is automatically created with “Untitled” as the title. The app will then rename the file on disk if you change the title or date.
Jekyll has no conventions for handling images in posts. You need to decide where to place them, whether to optimise them, and how to reference them in Markdown.
In JekyllStudio you simply drag an image into the post. The image is automatically optimised for web and the Markdown reference is inserted at your cursor.
Jekyll already offers a preview server that rebuilds the site as you write. This usually involves starting the preview server from the terminal and switching between your text editor and browser.
JekyllStudio simplifies this process by integrating it directly. On launch it automatically spawns the preview server and renders the current post. This allows you to preview content in your site’s styling without leaving the app.
layout or published
JekyllStudio is for people who love the Jekyll philosophy, but yearn for the polished writing experience of platforms such as Substack or Wordpress. It is open source and available for download on GitHub. If you like it, I’d love to hear from you.
Written by Tate Johnson on 14 Mar 2026. Subscribe to my blog's RSS feed.