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The Quarkdown Series: Markdown with Superpowers, in Eleven Parts

Overview of my eleven-part Quarkdown series — from positioning through scripting, layout, diagrams and academic writing to CLI, the AI agent skill and the compiler pipeline.

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Quarkdown (opens in a new tab) is a Markdown superset with functions, variables and scripting — a "readable LaTeX" that turns one source into a web page, a PDF, a book or a presentation. Across eleven parts I worked through the tool from the ground up: functions and use cases, tips and worked examples. This page is the entry point and table of contents for the series — from here you jump into any part.

Why Quarkdown

Markdown is everywhere, but it hits a wall the moment a document wants more than flowing text: image sizes, numbered figures, multi-column layout, recurring building blocks, mathematics. Quarkdown solves this with a single idea — the function call .func {…} — while staying readable and machine-friendly. Exactly this dual nature (plain-text source, professional artifact) makes it an exciting tool for a world where humans and AI systems read the same content.

The series

  1. When Markdown Learns Typesetting — positioning against Markdown, LaTeX and Typst, the core idea, installation, first document.
  2. Functions, Variables, Scripting — function calls, chaining with ::, variables, custom functions, conditionals, loops, math.
  3. Document Types, Themes & Page Setup — how .doctype makes four outputs from one source, plus themes and page format.
  4. Layout: Stacks, Containers, Boxes & Grids — arranging content, and why the blank line decides it.
  5. Data, Tables & Diagrams — generating tables, reading CSV, XY charts and Mermaid diagrams.
  6. Academic Writing — TeX formulae, bibliography, cross-references, numbering, the paper library.
  7. Presentations — slides, interactive fragments and speaker notes on a reveal.js base.
  8. CLI, PDF Export & Deployment — the key options, live preview, the permission system and CI/CD.
  9. Quarkdown & AI — the bundled agent skill and why Markdown is the bridge to AI.
  10. Inside Quarkdown: the Pipeline — how source becomes HTML in six stages.
  11. Tips & Tricks — the small touches that make everyday work easier.

Who it's worth it for

Anyone who regularly writes structured documents — docs, reports, papers, presentations, knowledge bases — and doesn't want to trade Markdown's readability for LaTeX's power will find a middle path in Quarkdown. Parts 1 and 3 are enough to get started; the rest go deeper into individual use cases.

Further reading

The full reference is the official Quarkdown wiki (opens in a new tab) together with the standard library (opens in a new tab). Thematically related from this blog are What is GEO? and Writing for AI — both revolve, like this series' AI part, around machine-readable content.