---
title: Bengal 0.1.0
description: Initial alpha release with core features
type: changelog
date: 2025-10-13
draft: false
lang: en
tags: [release, changelog, alpha]
keywords: [release, 0.1.0, alpha, initial release]
category: changelog
---

# Bengal 0.1.0 - Initial Alpha Release
**Released: October 13, 2025**

Welcome to the first alpha release of Bengal! 🎉

Bengal 0.1.0 is a high-performance static site generator built from the ground up for Python 3.14+ and designed to handle sites of all sizes - from small blogs to large documentation sites with thousands of pages.

## What's Bengal?

Bengal is a static site generator that focuses on:
- **Speed** - Parallel processing and smart caching make builds fast
- **Scale** - Handle sites with 100s to 10,000+ pages efficiently
- **Developer Experience** - Modern Python, great defaults, minimal configuration
- **Flexibility** - Powerful templates, cascading configuration, extensible design

## Key Features

### Fast Builds

- **Parallel Processing**: Builds use multiple CPU cores automatically
- **Incremental Builds**: Only rebuild what changed (15-50x faster for updates)
- **Streaming Mode**: Handle large sites without memory issues
- **Smart Caching**: Automatic cache invalidation when content changes

### Content Management

- **Markdown First**: Write in Markdown with YAML or TOML front matter
- **Hierarchical Sections**: Organize content in folders, automatic navigation
- **Taxonomies**: Built-in tag and category support
- **Related Posts**: Automatic content recommendations based on tags
- **Menus**: Flexible menu system with nested navigation

### Templates & Themes

- **Jinja2 Templates**: Powerful template engine with custom filters
- **Theme System**: Beautiful default theme, easy customization
- **Template Swizzling**: Override any template without forking the theme
- **Syntax Highlighting**: Fast code highlighting with caching

### Python API Documentation

One of Bengal's standout features is automatic API documentation:

- **AST-Based**: Generates docs without importing your code (safe!)
- **Multiple Styles**: Supports Google, NumPy, and Sphinx docstrings
- **Smart Cross-References**: Automatic linking between related items
- **Configurable**: Control visibility of private/special methods

### Asset Pipeline

- **Fingerprinting**: Automatic cache busting for CSS/JS/images
- **Minification**: Compress CSS and JavaScript
- **Image Optimization**: Automatic image processing
- **Optional Node.js**: Use SCSS, PostCSS, and esbuild if needed

### SEO & Discovery

- **Automatic Sitemaps**: XML sitemap generation
- **RSS Feeds**: Automatic feed generation for blogs
- **Search**: JSON search index for fast client-side search
- **LLM-Friendly**: Export content for AI tools and search

### Developer Tools

- **Quick Start**: `bengal new site` scaffolds a complete site
- **Live Preview**: Development server with hot reload
- **File Watching**: Auto-rebuild when files change
- **Rich Output**: Beautiful console output with progress bars
- **Health Checks**: Validate your site for common issues
- **Profiling**: Built-in performance measurement

## Build Profiles

Bengal includes three build profiles optimized for different workflows:

- **Writer** (`--profile writer`): Fast rebuilds, minimal output - perfect when writing
- **Theme Dev** (`--profile theme-dev`): Full builds with detailed logging
- **Developer** (`--profile developer`): Default balanced mode

## Getting Started

### Installation

```bash
pip install bengal
```

**Requires Python 3.14+**. For best performance, use Python 3.14t (free-threaded) for 1.8x speedup on large sites.

### Create Your First Site

```bash
# Create a new site
bengal new site my-blog

# Navigate to it
cd my-blog

# Start the dev server
bengal site serve

# Build for production
bengal site build
```

### Create Content

```bash
# Create a new page
bengal new page "My First Post"

# Create a page in a section
bengal new page "Tutorial 1" --section guides
```

## What Bengal Is Good For

✅ **Documentation Sites** (100-5,000 pages)
- Fast builds with Python 3.14t
- Automatic API documentation
- Hierarchical navigation
- Search and cross-references

✅ **Blogs and Content Sites**
- Tag-based organization
- Related posts
- RSS feeds
- Beautiful default theme

✅ **Project Documentation**
- AST-based API docs (safe for any Python code)
- Syntax highlighting
- Multiple docstring formats
- Version-aware navigation

## Alpha Release Notes

This is an **alpha release** - it works well, but the API may change. We recommend:

- ✅ Use for personal projects and experimentation
- ✅ Use for documentation sites with backups
- ✅ Report bugs and provide feedback
- ⚠️ Test thoroughly before using in production
- ⚠️ Expect occasional breaking changes in 0.x versions

## Requirements

- Python 3.14 or higher
- 3.14t recommended for best performance (1.8x faster)
- See [Installation Guide](/docs/get-started/installation/) for details

## Next Steps

- [Quick Start Guide](/docs/get-started/)
- [Configuration Reference](/docs/building/configuration/)
- [GitHub Repository](https://github.com/lbliii/bengal)
- [Report Issues](https://github.com/lbliii/bengal/issues)

## Thank You!

Thank you for trying Bengal! Your feedback helps make it better. Please report any issues or suggestions on GitHub.
