I took the approach of bolting a second compiler on top of Hugo(a custom Python script) to get the extra things I wanted in Hugo. It still took a while, but I

I took the approach of bolting a second compiler on top of Hugo(a custom Python script) to get the extra things I wanted in Hugo. It still took a while, but I did get to leverage the parts of Hugo that already work well. I don't think there's much in the way of winning either way, since now I have a Build Process.