Lukáš Lalinský, after years of web development in higher-level languages, turned to Zig for low-level projects but found a gap in type-safe HTML templating. Dissatisfied with runtime errors and manual escaping in other approaches, he created zt, an adaptation of the Templ library for Go, to bring compile-time safety and efficiency to Zig web development.
The zt library works by parsing templates and transpiling them into Zig code during the standard `zig build` process. This allows template parameters to be fully typed, so the Zig compiler can catch mistakes like typos in variable names at compile time. The generated code writes directly to an std.Io.Writer, avoiding intermediate allocations. For security, all dynamic values are HTML-escaped by default in both text and attributes, and values in URL attributes such as href or src are checked for dangerous schemes, with raw output requiring explicit {!value} syntax.
One current limitation of zt is its handling of block-level control flow: lines beginning with if, for, or switch are interpreted as Zig code, meaning plain text like if you forgot your password... on its own line causes a parse error unless wrapped in an element or written as a string expression. The author is considering adopting explicit markers like @if, @for, and @switch, similar to Razor or Twirl, to resolve this ambiguity. Despite its promise, zt remains immature, and the author invites feedback through GitHub issues or the Zig Discord.