Generated Output

Output produced by a plugin, distinct from content outputs. Generated outputs have owners and dependencies, and their regeneration is driven by output dependency declarations.

Ownership and dependencies

Each generated output has a producer (e.g., plugin:${output.owner}) and a list of dependencies of type OutputDependency. Without declared dependencies, a generated output is unknown, which triggers full output regeneration.

Dependency Types for Generated Output

Each generated output has a producer (e.g., plugin:${output.owner}) and a list of dependencies of type OutputDependency. The dependency types and their meanings are:

• content { slug } — That content changed.
• tag { tag } — Content carrying that tag changed.
• folder { folder } — Content in that folder changed.
• global — Any content changed.
• unknown — Always triggers full output regeneration. Without declared dependencies, a generated output is unknown.

Comparison with content outputs

Content outputs are owned by content entries and have content type dependencies. Generated outputs are owned by plugins and can have arbitrary dependency types. This distinction is important for incremental SSG: content outputs can be selectively invalidated based on their content dependencies, while generated outputs with unknown dependencies force full output regeneration.

Examples of generated output dependency declarations:

// Generated output with content dependency
{
  "kind": "generated",
  "path": "/js/bundle.js",
  "producer": "plugin:remark-gfm",
  "dependencies": [{ "type": "content", "slug": "blog-post-1" }]
}
 
// Generated output with unknown dependency (triggers full regeneration)
{
  "kind": "generated",
  "path": "/api/data.json",
  "producer": "plugin:custom-plugin",
  "dependencies": [{ "type": "unknown" }]
}
 
## Related terms
 
- [[ssg|SSG]]
- [[output-cache|Output Cache]]
- [[output-dependency|Output Dependency]]
 
## Learn more
 
- [Build System](../framework/build-system.md)