Streamlining My Jekyll to Zola Migration with Gemini CLI

Migrating a blog from one platform to another can feel like a monumental task, especially when dealing with content restructuring and front matter standardization. When I recently moved my site from Jekyll to Zola, I faced the challenge of updating dozens of posts: ensuring consistent dates, correctly structuring tags into Zola's [taxonomies], adding new [extra] fields like author, toc, and display_published, and cleaning up old fields like description. Doing this manually for each file would have been a significant time sink.

This is where the Gemini CLI, my trusty AI companion, stepped in. Leveraging its ability to understand and manipulate structured data, I was able to automate a large chunk of this tedious process.

The Challenge: Front Matter Overhaul

Jekyll's front matter often includes fields like description and tags at the top level, while Zola prefers these, along with custom data, within [extra] or [taxonomies]. Standardizing this across numerous posts requires attention to detail:

• Dates: Jekyll dates are often in a YYYY-MM-DD format, while Zola might prefer ISO 8601 or just YYYY-MM-DD.
• Tags: Jekyll's top-level tags array needs to become [taxonomies]\ntags = [...] in Zola.
• New Fields: Adding draft, author, toc, and display_published consistently.

Enter Gemini CLI: My AI Migration Assistant

I often use the Gemini CLI for quick tasks, code generation, or even just brainstorming. For this migration, I found it particularly useful for front matter transformations. My workflow involved a series of targeted prompts to help standardize the TOML front matter across my Jekyll posts.

For instance, I might have used a prompt like this (simulated):

# Imagine a hypothetical prompt to Gemini CLI:
gemini prompt "Convert the following Jekyll front matter to Zola TOML format.
Ensure date is YYYY-MM-DD, move tags to [taxonomies], add draft=false,
and include [extra] fields: toc=true, display_published=true, author='mxaddict'.
Remove the top-level 'description' field, but include it within [extra] if present.

Jekyll Front Matter:
---
title: \"My Post Title\"
date: 2016-08-07T00:00:00Z
description: \"A sample description.\"
tags: [\"tag1\", \"tag2\"]
---"

Gemini CLI would then process this, providing the standardized TOML block, which I could then integrate into my Zola Markdown files. While it wasn't a fully automated script from start to finish (I still needed to manage file movements and structure), it significantly reduced the manual effort for front matter consistency.

Benefits: Speed and Consistency

Using Gemini CLI for these repetitive tasks brought several benefits:

• Speed: What would have taken hours of copy-pasting and manual editing was reduced to minutes of prompt engineering and verification.
• Consistency: AI-driven standardization ensures uniformity across all posts, reducing potential errors and making the site more robust.
• Focus: By offloading the tedious parts, I could focus more on the actual content migration and Zola-specific template adjustments.

Final Thoughts

The Gemini CLI proved to be an invaluable tool during my Jekyll to Zola migration. It's a testament to how AI can augment development workflows, making complex tasks more manageable and allowing us to focus on the creative and architectural aspects of our projects. If you're facing a similar content migration, don't underestimate the power of an LLM assistant for automating front matter and repetitive tasks!