Why incremental builds are a publishing feature
A site generator should notice what changed without making correctness optional.
<h1 id="why-incremental-builds-are-a-publishing-feature">Why incremental builds are a publishing feature</h1>
<p>Fast builds are not just an engineering benchmark. They change how often someone is willing to preview a draft, adjust a title, or fix a tiny link.</p>
<p>Pagecraft renders the complete set of derived pages in memory, compares content hashes, writes only changed files, and removes stale output after a rename or deletion. That means tag pages, feeds, archives, pagination, and the sitemap stay honest without asking authors to remember a special command.</p>
<p>The important part is not merely skipping work. It is keeping the generated site correct when the source changes.</p>