templify

templify

Convert Markdown files to styled PDFs using a bundle-driven template system.

Usage

templify -input document.md -output document.pdf
templify -input document.md -bundle report -config config.yml -output document.pdf
templify -input invoice.md -bundle invoice -output invoice.pdf
templify -input quote.md -bundle quote -output quote.pdf
templify -input document.md -bundle ./my-bundle/ -output document.pdf

Flags

Bundles

A bundle is a directory containing a main.html template, an optional cover.html, and an optional default.yml with bundle-specific config defaults. Built-in bundles are embedded in the binary.

Custom bundle

Create a directory with at least a main.html and pass its path as -bundle:

my-bundle/
├── main.html       # Go html/template
├── cover.html      # optional cover page
└── default.yml     # optional config defaults

templify -input document.md -bundle ./my-bundle/ -output document.pdf

Configuration

All visual options are controlled via a YAML config file. Values are layered: config.Default() → bundle default.yml → user -config file → front matter.

page:
  size: A4
  margins:
    top: 25mm
    right: 20mm
    bottom: 25mm
    left: 25mm

font:
  family: Inter
  url: https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@400;600&display=swap
  # faces: [...]           # self-host instead of linking url, see "Self-hosting fonts" below
  size: 11pt
  line_height: 1.6

justify: false
paragraph_indent: 13mm   # first-line indent on paragraphs
heading_indent: 5mm      # padding-left step per sub-level (h3 = 1×, h4 = 2×, …)

heading_numbers:
  enabled: true           # prefix h2+ with 1 / 1.1 / 1.1.1 counters
  exclude:                # headings that must not be numbered
    - Introduction
    - Conclusion

toc:
  enabled: true
  max_depth: 3
  exclude:                # headings to omit from the TOC entirely
    - Remerciements
  pre_toc:                # sections extracted from body and placed before the TOC
    - Remerciements

references:
  bibliography: "Bibliographie"       # h2 heading of the bibliography section
  sitography: "Sitographie"           # h2 heading of the sitography section
  figures: "Table des illustrations"  # h2 heading to replace with the auto-generated table of figures

header:
  enabled: true
  background: "linear-gradient(to right, #1e293b, #475569)"
  # left/center/right set per-document in front matter

footer:
  enabled: true
  background: ""

blank_page: true          # insert a blank page before the TOC (double-sided printing)

colors:
  primary: "#1e293b"
  primary_light: "#475569"
  background: "#f8fafc"
  text: "#0f172a"
  text_muted: "#64748b"

code:
  theme: monokai          # syntax highlighting theme; `templify -code-themes` lists them, "none" disables
  background: ""          # override the theme's panel background; "none" removes the panel entirely
  foreground: ""          # override the theme's default text color
  font_family: JetBrains Mono
  font_url: https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=JetBrains+Mono:wght@400;700&display=swap
  # faces: [...]           # same self-hosting mechanism as font.faces above
  font_size: 8.5pt
  line_height: 1.45
  line_numbers: false     # only on fences naming a language; use ```text for plain blocks
  wrap: true              # fold long lines instead of letting them run off the page
  keep_together_lines: 25 # blocks up to this many lines never split across pages; 0 disables

cover:
  enabled: true
  template: ""            # path to a custom cover template (relative to this file)

custom:                   # bundle-specific options, accessible in templates via .Config.CustomString / .Config.CustomBool
  invoice:
    show:
      logo: true
    logo: ./logo.png
    labels:
      client: "Bill to"

Self-hosting fonts

font.url/code.font_url link a webfont stylesheet by default, and Chromium fetches it at render time. This can leave the PDF's text layer subtly broken: copying text out of it may transpose letters or split words with stray spaces. The usual cause is a variable font — Google Fonts hands one out whenever a stylesheet requests more than one weight, and Chromium's PDF export mis-handles those.

font.faces/code.faces self-host a static file per weight instead, inlined as a data URI:

templify -fetch-fonts -config myconfig.yml   # downloads the files, prints a faces: block to paste in

This fixes the worst of it, but the same symptom has more than one trigger, and self-hosting alone doesn't clear all of them. templify also automatically wraps every generated font-size in CSS's round(value, 1px) (fixes a narrower case around underscores in monospace code) and styles inline code with box-shadow instead of padding (padding on an inline element was enough to occasionally misorder the line it sat in). One further trigger has no automatic fix yet: a font whose internal unitsPerEm isn't a power of two (Manrope and JetBrains Mono both ship as 1000/2000; Inter ships as 2048) can still corrupt copy-paste around specific glyphs regardless of font-size — rescaling the font file with fontTools clears it, see the docs.

See Self-hosting fonts in the docs for the full explanation of all four causes, including why this is a PDF-reader bug (verified against an independent extraction engine) rather than a defect in the generated PDF.

Front matter

Document metadata is declared as YAML at the top of the Markdown file.

Report

---
title: My Report
author: Alice
date: 2026-05-06
header:
  left: "My Company"
  right: "Confidential"
footer:
  right: "{page} / {pages}"
---

## Introduction

Content starts here.

{page} and {pages} are replaced with the current page number and total page count.

Invoice

---
invoice_number: "2026-001"
date: 2026-05-10
due_date: 2026-06-09
vat: 20
---

## Vendeur

**Acme SAS**
12 rue de la Paix — 75001 Paris

## Client

**Société Exemple**
45 avenue des Champs — 69000 Lyon

## Articles

| Description | Qté | Prix HT |
|---|---|---|
| Développement API | 10 | 950,00 |
| Formation (demi-journée) | 0,5 | 800,00 |

## Conditions

Paiement à 30 jours.

The last two columns of the Articles table are always interpreted as quantity × unit price. Any number of columns can precede them. HT, TVA, and TTC totals are computed automatically.

Quote

Same structure as invoice. Use quote_number and validity_date instead of invoice_number and due_date. Set vat: 0 or disable VAT display via config to produce a HT-only total.

Markdown features

• GFM — tables, strikethrough, task lists
• Footnotes — rendered at the bottom of the page where the reference appears
• Definition lists
• Typographer — smart quotes, dashes
• Image captions — set the image title attribute to render a <figcaption>:

  ![alt text](image.png "This becomes the caption")
  

• Syntax highlighting — fenced blocks are rendered as a filled panel, colored by language:

  ```go
  func main() {}
  ```
  

  Pick the theme with code.theme (templify -code-themes lists them all)
• Auto heading IDs — used for TOC anchor links

Back matter

Table of figures

Set references.figures to the h2 heading text in your document. The tool replaces the section's content with an auto-generated table (dotted leaders, page numbers resolved at render time):

## Table des illustrations

<!-- content is replaced automatically -->

Bibliography & sitography

Set references.bibliography and/or references.sitography to the corresponding h2 heading texts. List items are formatted as [n] numbered references.

Use ordered lists so the numbers are visible in your source:

## Bibliographie

1. CommonMark Spec — [spec.commonmark.org](https://spec.commonmark.org)
2. CSS Paged Media Module Level 3 — W3C Working Draft

## Sitographie

3. goldmark : [github.com/yuin/goldmark](https://github.com/yuin/goldmark)
4. paged.js : [pagedjs.org](https://pagedjs.org)

For sitography, any http(s) link in a list item is automatically moved to a new line below the entry title. Optional h3 sub-sections are supported — numbering is continuous across all sub-sections.

Bundle authoring

Bundle templates are Go html/template files. The template context:

type Document struct {
    Title    string
    Author   string
    Date     string
    Body     template.HTML         // rendered HTML body (do not re-escape)
    PreTOC   template.HTML         // pre-TOC sections extracted from body
    Meta     map[string]any        // all front matter fields
    TOC      []TocEntry
    Figures  []FigureEntry
    Sections map[string]Section    // h2 sections keyed by heading text
}

type Section struct {
    HTML  template.HTML
    Table [][]string               // parsed table: row 0 = headers
}

type TocEntry struct {
    Level    int
    Text     string
    ID       string
    NoNumber bool
}

type FigureEntry struct {
    ID      string                 // e.g. "fig-1"
    Caption string
}

The template also receives:

• .Config (*config.Config) — full config, including .Config.CustomString "my.path" "default" and .Config.CustomBool "my.flag" false for dot-path access into custom:
• .ConfigCSS (template.HTML) — CSS block derived from the config (font, colors, margins, code blocks, …)

Do not style pre, pre code or code in a bundle: .ConfigCSS owns code blocks and its rules are prefixed with html so they outrank a bare pre rule. A theme's token colors and its panel background belong together, and a bundle repainting only the background would leave light text on a light panel. Override the --code-* variables instead, or match the html pre prefix and set code.theme: none. Bundles written before the code: section should drop their old pre rules. This also extends to any inline element you add inside body text yourself: avoid padding on it (use box-shadow's spread instead) — see Bundle Authoring in the docs for why.

Template functions

Installation

go install github.com/tomsiouan/templify@latest

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/tomsiouan/templify
cd templify
go build -o build/templify .

templify -version reports the tag it was built from. Building from a git checkout (go build ., go install .) picks this up automatically through Go's own VCS build-info stamping — no flags needed. task build and go install github.com/tomsiouan/templify@vX.Y.Z go one step further and inject the exact tag via -ldflags, which reads cleaner than the pseudo-version (vX.Y.Z-N-gHASH[+dirty]) Go's automatic stamping produces between tags:

go build -ldflags "-X main.version=$(git describe --tags --always --dirty)" -o build/templify .

Requirements

• Go 1.26.2+
• Chromium (auto-downloaded to ~/.cache/rod/ on first run)