Hugo page schema

Built-in id: hugo:page:0.165

Published at https://hawkeyexl.github.io/manni/schemas/hugo/0.165.json. A $schema that names this URL resolves to the bundled copy, with no network call.

hugo:page:0.165 checks the front matter Hugo 0.165 reads from a .md page. It requires nothing, because Hugo builds a page with no front matter at all. That makes it a pure shape check. It catches what Hugo accepts without complaint and then acts on wrongly. It is one of the platform schemas, which say what a generator accepts rather than what your team agreed.

Property	Value
Id	hugo:page:0.165
Title	Hugo front matter v0.165
Files it fits	.md
Dialect	Draft 2020-12
Required fields	None
Additional properties	Allowed (additionalProperties: true)
Reference kind	builtin
On by default	No
Upstream reference	Front matter
JSON	hugo/0.165.json

Use it

Hugo’s content root is content/, and a docs section usually sits under it:

manni.config.yaml

meta:
  overrides:
    - files: "content/**"
      schemas:
        - hugo:page:0.165

For a one-off run, pass the id directly:

manni meta validate content/ -s hugo:page:0.165

Fields

The 28 fields Hugo itself defines. Everything else you see in a Hugo site is a user-configured taxonomy or a custom parameter rather than something Hugo defines. It passes as an unknown key. That covers tags, categories, series, and whatever your theme reads.

Field	Type	Notes
title, linkTitle, description, summary	string	None required; Hugo derives a title from the file name.
date, lastmod, publishDate, expiryDate	string	Typed, not format-checked. See the aside below.
draft, headless, isCJKLanguage	boolean	A quoted "false" fails here, which is the point.
weight	integer	Lower sorts first. A quoted number sorts as a string.
aliases, keywords, outputs	string array
slug, url, layout, markup, type, translationKey	string
menus	string | array | map	One menu, several, or a map of per-menu options.
cascade	map | array of maps	The array form carries a _target filter per entry.
build	map	list, render, publishResources.
sitemap	map	changefreq is enumerated; priority is 0–1.
resources	array	Each entry needs src.
params, sites	map

The two checks that pay for this schema are weight and draft. Both are routinely written quoted, both are accepted by Hugo without a word, and both then behave wrongly. A string weight sorts lexically, so "10" lands before "9". And draft: "false" is a non-empty string, which is truthy, so the page does not publish.

Hugo's dates are typed but not format-checked

date and its siblings are string with no format. Hugo parses several layouts, including a full timestamp, a bare 2026-06-25, a bare year, and a Unix timestamp. Pinning one format here would fail input Hugo accepts. Asserting something untrue about the tool is the thing a platform schema must not do.

TOML is worth a note of its own. Hugo’s +++ fence has a real date type, so date = 2026-06-25 parses to a date rather than a string. Before validating, manni meta normalizes it back to the spelling it was written as. The same schema then fits both fences, and a local date does not silently become a timestamp.

Additional properties

Allowed. Taxonomy terms such as tags and categories are configured per site rather than defined by Hugo, so they pass unchecked, as do custom parameters.

Example page

A page carrying the common fields, at legal values. This is test/fixtures/platform/hugo-valid.md, and it passes.

content/docs/cache.md

---
title: Configuring the cache
linkTitle: Cache
description: How Hugo's build cache works and when to clear it.
date: 2026-06-25
lastmod: 2026-07-01
draft: false
weight: 30
aliases:
  - /old/cache/
keywords: [cache, build]
outputs: [html, json]
menus: main
params:
  team: docs
build:
  list: always
  render: true
sitemap:
  changefreq: weekly
  priority: 0.5
resources:
  - src: diagram.png
    title: Cache diagram
---

A common mistake

A quoted weight is a string. Hugo accepts it and sorts it lexically:

test/fixtures/platform/hugo-bad-weight.md

---
title: Configuring the cache
weight: "30"
---

✗ test/fixtures/platform/hugo-bad-weight.md
    /weight  must be integer  (line 3)  [hugo:page:0.165]

1 file checked, 0 passed, 1 failed, 1 error

Drop the quotes. A quoted draft: "false" fails the same way, with /draft must be boolean.