Hugo Template Development Skill

Purpose

This skill enforces proper Hugo template development practices, including mandatory runtime testing to catch errors that static builds miss.

Critical Testing Requirement

Hugo's npx hugo --quiet only validates template syntax, not runtime execution.

Template errors like accessing undefined fields, nil values, or incorrect type assertions only appear when Hugo actually renders pages. You MUST test templates by running the server.

Mandatory Testing Protocol

For ANY Hugo Template Change

After modifying files in layouts/, layouts/partials/, or layouts/shortcodes/:

Step 1: Start Hugo server in the background and capture output