Comments

Nuartz ships with Giscus — a comment system powered by GitHub Discussions. It requires no backend, no database, and is completely free.

Setup

1. Enable GitHub Discussions

Your repository must be public and have Discussions enabled:

• Go to your repo → Settings → Features → Discussions → check it on.

2. Install the Giscus app

Install the Giscus GitHub App on your repository.

3. Get your IDs

Visit giscus.app, enter your repo name, and it will generate your config values. Select Announcements as the discussion category.

4. Add environment variables

In Vercel (or your .env.local for local dev):

NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPO=your-user/your-repo
NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPO_ID=R_xxxxxxxxxx
NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_CATEGORY=Announcements
NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_CATEGORY_ID=DIC_xxxxxxxxxx

If any variable is missing, the comment section is silently hidden.

5. Done

The <Giscus> component in apps/web/components/giscus.tsx reads these env vars and renders automatically on every content page.

Disabling per page

Add comments: false to a page's frontmatter:

---
title: No comments here
comments: false
---

Alternatives

Giscus requires a GitHub account to comment. If your audience is non-technical or you want anonymous comments, consider these alternatives:

Waline

Waline supports anonymous comments, emoji reactions, and has an admin dashboard.

• Requires a backend: deploy to Vercel + a database (Vercel KV, PlanetScale, or MongoDB Atlas — all have free tiers)
• Setup: waline.js.org/en/guide/get-started
• Replace components/giscus.tsx with the @waline/client script

Remark42

Remark42 is a self-hosted, privacy-first system with support for Google, GitHub, Twitter, and anonymous logins.

• Requires Docker to self-host (no external database needed — stores data in a single file)
• Best if you control your own server
• Docker image: umputun/remark42

Cusdis

Cusdis is ultra-lightweight (~5kb), anonymous-first, and requires no login from commenters.

• Requires self-hosting or their cloud plan
• Minimal UI — approve comments in a dashboard before they appear

Utterances

Utterances is the predecessor to Giscus. It uses GitHub Issues instead of Discussions.

• Simpler than Giscus but lacks reactions and nested replies
• If you're already using Giscus, there's no reason to switch

Comparison

Recommendation: For a developer-focused garden, stick with Giscus. For a general-audience blog, Waline is the best balance of features and setup effort.