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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 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 together with the standard library. Thematically related from this blog are What is GEO? and Writing for AI — both revolve, like this series' AI part, around machine-readable content.