What does HackerNews think of flat-file-cms?

Well by "wiki" it means to me that it saves history of changes and manage user access etc. That probably requires more complicated file setup than just markdown files.

If you want just markdown > website with some administration to edit you can use pretty much any flat file CMS. Kirby CMS is highend but you need buy license. Grav is ok open-source option but i don't like the admin part too much but its atleast active. You can find many more https://github.com/ahadb/flat-file-cms but flatfile cms often becomes pet project that people stop maintain so watch out for activity.

For others interested, here is a list of flat file CMSs: https://github.com/ahadb/flat-file-cms

I tried Hugo before but came to the same conclusion. The simplicity draw me into trying it, but in my opinion the solution is not streamlined.

That's why i finally settled for a Flat File CMS [1], in my case Grav [2]. Like with hugo you get total control. And with most of them you get a single web interface to administrate the site, manage extensions and write blog entries. And you still have the possibility to git push everything on the dev server and git pull on prod, without managing a database. It's a dream.

They are not without problems though. You need to host your php site somewhere. Sometimes it's necessary to dive into php to fix some problems and creating something unique still takes some web skills (in contrary to wordpress for example).

[1] https://github.com/ahadb/flat-file-cms

[2] https://getgrav.org/