Linewise

Linewise is a Vim-inspired Hugo theme for personal blogs. Posts behave like buffers, search borrows from quickfix, and the interface uses Vim as an interaction model without sacrificing reading comfort.

Demo and docs: linewise.tabsp.com

Features

• Hugo theme installable as a git submodule or Hugo Module
• Markdown posts in content/posts/
• Tags, posts list, RSS, sitemap, canonical URLs, and Open Graph metadata
• Client-side search backed by /search.json
• giscus comments powered by GitHub Discussions
• Vim-like command palette, search palette, bufferline, file explorer, and statusline
• Keyboard motions for list navigation and reading
• Mobile file explorer drawer and horizontally scrollable buffer tabs

Requirements

• Hugo Extended 0.146.0 or newer
• Go, if installing with Hugo Modules
• Node.js and pnpm only for Linewise theme development and Playwright tests

Installation

Create a Hugo site:

hugo new site my-blog
cd my-blog

Then choose one installation mode.

Git Submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/tabsp/linewise themes/linewise

baseURL = "https://example.com"
title = "My Blog"
locale = "en"
theme = "linewise"

Hugo Module

hugo mod init github.com/you/my-blog

baseURL = "https://example.com"
title = "My Blog"
locale = "en"

[module]
[[module.imports]]
path = "github.com/tabsp/linewise"

Use one mode per site. Do not configure both theme = "linewise" and a Linewise module import.

Configuration

Add the Linewise defaults to your site config:

[taxonomies]
tag = "tags"

[params.linewise]
description = "Notes from the command line."
author = "Your Name"
locale = "en"
favicon = "favicon.svg"
ogImage = "og.svg"
showExplorer = true
showBufferline = true

[params.linewise.comments]
provider = "none"

[outputs]
home = ["HTML", "RSS", "JSON"]

[outputFormats.JSON]
mediaType = "application/json"
baseName = "search"
isPlainText = true

[markup.highlight]
noClasses = false

Write posts in content/posts/:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
description: "A short description for SEO and previews."
date: 2026-01-01
tags: ["notes"]
draft: false
---

Read the full documentation on the example site: Theme Reference.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm dev
pnpm build
pnpm test

pnpm dev serves the example site at http://localhost:4322/.

Project Layout

archetypes/          Hugo archetypes
assets/              Theme CSS and TypeScript bundled by Hugo Pipes
exampleSite/         Example Hugo site
images/              Theme screenshots
layouts/             Hugo templates, partials, and shortcodes
static/              Theme-owned static assets
theme.toml           Hugo theme metadata

License

MIT