Hi all,
I’ve been working on a Hugo-based publishing system with a focus on speed, simplicity, and decoupled architecture. It’s centered around a client-side JS dashboard that functions as a clean, minimal interface for creating and editing Markdown content. It’s acting as a head for Hugo.
The system is designed as a pipeline:
client-side JS dashboard → optional Flask endpoint → Hugo → Firebase Hosting
The dashboard is 100% client-side and can be extended easily. It supports Markdown editing, image uploads, metadata entry via forms, and auto WebP conversion — all in the browser. It can also be customized to use a config.json for defining required frontmatter fields or workflows.
I’ve called it Kalashnikov CMS — the idea being to have a minimalistic, dependable toolchain for writers and editors who need to publish reliably, without a full CMS stack.
You can check out the dashboard component here:
https://github.com/roverbird/superdash
I’ve already written about it elsewhere, but since then I’ve added some features, including the Flask endpoint for handling file uploads to server. Right now, the system is deployed on a server, and it serves as a kind of online headless CMS for Hugo, the benefit being that content creators don’t need to touch the filesystem or the repo directly (and they get decent UX).
Now I’m considering wrapping the whole thing into a cross-platform desktop app, where everything runs locally: the editor, Hugo, and Firebase CLI. That would remove the need for a server entirely and create a standalone publishing system that’s fast, secure, and portable.
I’m curious if anyone here would be interested in using something like this, either the current web-based version or a local desktop build. Any feedback, use cases, or ideas for collaboration are welcome. For now, my todo list is to refactor JS code to have config.json with metadata fields settings.
Thanks.