Introduction to Petk

Welcome to Petk, a powerful template toolkit designed to streamline your template processing workflows. This guide will help you get started with Petk and understand its core concepts.

What is Petk?

Petk is a comprehensive template engine and processing toolkit that enables developers to:

• Process Markdown files with dynamic content inclusion
• Convert between Markdown and YAML formats
• Apply template transformations with powerful directive blocks
• Manage complex template hierarchies and dependencies

Getting Started

Installation

Install Petk using your preferred package manager:

# Using npm
npm install -g petk

# Using pnpm
pnpm install -g petk

# Using yarn
yarn global add petk

Your First Template

1. Create a new Markdown file called example.md:

# My First Template

This is a basic template that will be processed by Petk.

```{petk:include}
path: header.md
```

Welcome to the content section!

```{petk:include}
path: footer.md
```

2. Create the included files:

header.md:

## Header Section
This content is included from another file.

footer.md:

---
*Footer content goes here*

3. Process the template:

petk process example.md

Core Concepts

Template Directives

Petk uses special directive blocks to control template processing:

• {petk:include} - Include content from other files
• {petk:config} - Set processing configuration
• {petk:transform} - Apply transformations to content

File Processing

Petk can process individual files or entire directories:

# Process a single file
petk process template.md

# Process all files in a directory
petk process ./templates/

# Convert formats
petk convert input.md output.yaml

Next Steps

• Learn about CLI commands for detailed usage
• Explore common troubleshooting solutions
• Understand the architectural concepts behind Petk

Quick Reference

Command	Description
petk process <file>	Process a template file
petk convert <input> <output>	Convert between formats
petk --help	Show available commands
petk --version	Display version information

Ready to dive deeper? Check out our comprehensive CLI reference for all available commands and options.