# Djot

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Djot and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a stricter, saner alternative to Markdown with a well-designed, extensible syntax. Common caveat: nested lists need blank lines, and critics note it lacks a formal specification.

## Why people recommend it

- Stricter, saner take on Markdown (7 comments): "It seems like a well designed and thorough superset of markdown." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921352)) "it looks like it solves a lot of my complaints about markdown" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027922)) "It has all that I needed from markdown without any excess" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562780))
- Well designed, extensible syntax (3 comments): "It seems like a well designed and thorough superset of markdown." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921352)) "a more fully featured document format like Djot" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531643)) "feels very well designed and extensible too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818002))
- Good base for embedded DSLs (2 comments): "You need a well defined spec like djot as a DSL for this to work, so that parsers can be easily written for it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568992)) "Would make a good DSL inside languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569138))

## What people warn about

- No formal specification (4 comments): "I like it, but it doesn’t seem to have a specification, making it hard to create a new implementation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563968)) "but it looks like making a grammar is secondary for them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473510)) "Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have a formal spec." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46025805))
- Nested lists need blank lines (2 comments): "its requirement to write nested lists with blank lines between every change in indentation is a dealbreaker for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642967)) "djot requires a blank line before nested lists (at least in the default mode)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47950172))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Markdown](https://hackerapproved.com/p/markdown.md): 155 recommend
- [AsciiDoc](https://hackerapproved.com/p/asciidoc.md): 38 recommend
- [Quarkdown](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quarkdown.md): 19 recommend
- [Textile](https://hackerapproved.com/p/textile.md): 11 recommend
- [MDV](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mdv.md): 10 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Djot", https://hackerapproved.com/p/djot/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).