Files
khosra/docs/theme-contract.md
T
Claude Opus 5andbdeshi c16bf4bd9d add shortcodes as the first internal/ext feature
A call is `{{< name key="value" >}}` alone on a line, parsed by a goldmark block
parser into an AST node and rendered by executing a theme template of that name
(ADR-0036). `figure` ships; `include` and `gallery` need the including bundle's
directory, which the parser does not carry yet, so they wait.

The layering did the design work here. internal/render may not import
internal/ext, so render.New takes a callback that receives a Partial and returns
Markdown extensions, and cmd/khosra/wire.go holds the only list of enabled
features. Empty that list and the engine still builds and serves — which is the
property extensions.md says the contract should have.

Raw HTML stays disabled. An author's text reaches a page only as arguments that
html/template escapes in context, which the real binary shows: a hostile alt
becomes &lt;script&gt; and src="javascript:…" becomes #ZgotmplZ. Getting
contextual escaping from the standard library rather than writing it is the whole
reason a fragment renders this instead of the feature.

parseSet became variadic so the fragment set reuses it rather than growing a
second copy of the overlay logic; `Partial` takes map[string]string after the
advisory correctly flagged `any` as generality nothing had asked for.
2026-07-30 10:29:00 +06:00

9.9 KiB

Theme contract

What the engine promises a theme, and the only thing this repository is bound to (ADR-0023). A theme's markup, layout and styling are not the engine's business; a theme's inputs are.

STATUS: partly live. The fields under Live today exist and are gated; everything else is the shape the contract takes when the feature arrives. All of it is engine obligation, not theme instruction — a theme may ignore any of it.

Live today

A bundle page receives:

Field Contents
.Title may be empty; a template falls back to .Key rather than failing
.Lang the locale of this variant, always set
.Key the bundle's identity, without language or extension
.HTML the rendered body, already escaped
.Extra every frontmatter key the parser does not name (ADR-0002)
.Style the reference theme's stylesheet, inlined so a bare site root needs no asset route
.Canonical the permalink of the variant actually served — not the URL requested, which differs when the fallback chain supplied another language
.Alternates every language this key exists in, as .Lang and .URL, for hreflang
.Sequence the series this page sits in, absent when it sits in none (ADR-0033)

.Sequence carries the reading order and this page's place in it:

Field Contents
.Sequence.Title, .Sequence.URL the series' title (may be empty) and its permalink
.Sequence.Members every entry in reading order, each as an .Items entry — ascending, unlike a dated listing
.Sequence.Index, .Sequence.Count this page's 1-based position and the total; Index is 0 when this page is the series landing itself
.Sequence.Prev, .Sequence.Next the neighbours, absent at the ends and on a landing page. Prev is the earlier entry — the opposite sense of a listing's .PrevURL
.Sequence.First, .Sequence.Last the ends of the series, present whenever it has members

A landing page therefore renders an archive from .Members and a chapter renders navigation from .Prev/.Next, both from one field. Membership and order are the engine's business (content-model.md); a theme never sorts.

Two named templates: base is executed for every page; main is the block each kind of page defines and a theme redefines. There is one parsed set per kind — bundle and listing today — so two kinds may both define main without colliding (ADR-0019).

A listing page receives .Title, .Lang, .Canonical, .Style as above, plus:

Field Contents
.Items entries on this page: .Title, .Key, .URL, .Date
.Page, .Pages 1-based position and total, Pages at least 1
.PrevURL, .NextURL empty at the ends; newer is prev, because the order is newest first
.Groups set instead of .Items when entries are grouped — a tag listing groups by section, each .Name and .Items

Chrome text and formatting

Three functions, available in every template including a site root's own blocks. They exist so no template hardcodes English: the words the engine supplies are the engine's to localise (ADR-0034).

Call Gives
{{t .Lang "newer"}} one phrase in that language. Extra arguments fill %s placeholders in order
{{num .Lang .Page}} an integer in that language's digits — 12, ১২
{{day .Lang .Date}} a date as that language reads it — 8 March 2026, ৮ মার্চ ২০২৬; empty for a zero date

Phrase keys today: newer, older, empty, page-of (two arguments), position (two arguments). An unknown language falls back to the default locale and an unknown key returns itself, so a missing translation can never blank a page or fail a render.

Three rules a theme must keep: put the machine-readable form in the attribute and the localised form in the text — <time datetime="{{.Date.Format "2006-01-02"}}">{{day .Lang .Date}}</time>; never localise .Title, .HTML or anything else the author wrote; and never pass a URL, key or path segment through these functions. An address is not chrome (content-model.md).

A site root cannot add or override a phrase yet. A theme needing its own words writes them in its own block; site-supplied strings wait for the settings cascade (ideas/deferred-decisions.md).

Shortcode fragments

templates/shortcodes.html holds one named template per shortcode, and that is where a shortcode's markup lives — the engine parses the call and supplies its arguments, never any HTML (ADR-0036).

Shortcode Template Receives
{{< figure src="…" alt="…" caption="…" >}} figure .src, .alt, .caption — every argument as written, escaped on output

Arguments arrive as strings and are escaped by html/template like any other data, which is what keeps an author's text out of the markup. A call whose template is missing renders nothing and logs; it never fails the page.

The set is overlaid the same way as the page kinds: a site's templates/shortcodes.html is parsed after the embedded one, so redefining figure replaces it and any fragment left alone is inherited. Argument names are contract, added but never renamed.

The stability rule

Fields and names are added, never renamed or removed. Absence is always legal: a template reading a field that does not exist gets the zero value and must not crash, and the engine must not make a missing field fatal at request time (ADR-0002, invariant 1). This is the View-layer freeze from architecture.md, arriving as soon as a theme exists rather than at Arc 2.

Breaking the contract is not a feature — it is a new contract version, and it needs an ADR.

What the engine provides

Provides Detail
the page object known fields plus an Extra bag carrying unknown frontmatter (ADR-0002)
the resolved cascade settings after site → section → bundle resolution (ideas/deferred-decisions.md)
queries the page needs its sequence neighbours, its taxonomy terms, its section's members
named template lookup per-type sets; a theme redefines a named block and inherits the rest (ADR-0019)
URLs every path the engine emits, so a theme never constructs one by hand
per-page assets the styles / scripts frontmatter lists, resolved relative to the bundle
chrome strings looked up by key and language, never hardcoded English in a template — live, see above
validity windows a template that renders time-dependent output declares one

Extras view

For a request under a bundle's extras directory (ideas/deferred-decisions.md) the engine additionally provides:

Field Contents
.Extras.Entries the tree: Name, Path, URL, RawURL, Kind, Size, IsDir, ModTime
.Extras.Selected nil on the bare listing; otherwise the chosen entry
.Extras.Selected.HTML rendered output for markdown and text kinds; empty otherwise
.Extras.Selected.RawURL always present — for <img src>, <object data>, or a download link

.Bundle is the parent, so a theme has its title, language and breadcrumb. Selecting an entry is an ordinary link and a full re-render, so a sidebar-plus-pane layout needs no JavaScript; swapping the pane client-side is a later enhancement over working markup, never a requirement.

What the engine does not provide

Layout, class names, CSS, client-side behaviour, and any choice about how something looks — including how media is embedded, how a listing is arranged, and whether something appears in a sidebar. Those are theme decisions, and a request touching them is split: a contract extension here, a change there.

The engine also does not provide a component library, a CSS build step, or a JavaScript runtime. conventions.md holds the output floor the engine itself meets — semantic HTML, zero-JS, every image carrying width, height and alt — and a theme is expected to stay inside it, but the engine does not enforce a theme's markup.

The reference theme

The binary embeds a reference theme — templates plus one small stylesheet — so a bare site root renders (ADR-0026). It exists to make this document executable: it implements every field and block named here and nothing else, and a golden-file test through it catches contract regressions before a real theme does.

It is not a design. Legibility only, no branding, no visual opinions, no JavaScript — verify.sh fails on a <script tag in it. If it starts accumulating taste, it has stopped being a reference.

It demonstrates the contract; it is not the contract. Changing it does not change what a theme may rely on — which is why verify.sh also fails when it changes without this document changing, since in practice the two drift together.

Overriding it

A site root's templates/ is parsed after the embedded set, and the last definition of a name wins, so a theme redefines one named block and inherits the document (ADR-0019). Each set is built from named files and only those are overlaid — base.html plus that kind's block file (page.html or list.html), and shortcodes.html on its own. Overlaying every site template into every set would let a listing's main leak into bundle pages, which is the collision per-kind sets exist to prevent.

templates/theme.css in the site root replaces the reference stylesheet entirely; there is no merging.

static/ in the site root is served verbatim under /static/. Directory paths answer 404 rather than listing their contents.

Splitting a request

When a feature spans engine and theme, this repo delivers:

  1. the contract extension — new fields, new named blocks, new queries, new URLs;
  2. a note stating what a theme must do to use it, precise enough to act on without this conversation;
  3. embedded defaults updated far enough to prove the extension works.

It does not deliver the theme. Claiming otherwise is the same error as claiming to have migrated content in a site root this repo cannot see.