Everyone builds a quirky pipeline
Commenters share their own setups, from Google Docs to Markdown to Typst, HTML with WeasyPrint, Pandoc, and custom markup languages, and admire the author's homemade groff macros.
Tooling is procrastination; just write
Several note that tweaking the pipeline replaces actual writing. They point out that great writers stick to fixed routines, whether that is WordStar or pen and paper.
troff has a proud history
People recall roff's role in UNIX's origins, O'Reilly books, the Go book and 9front authors still typesetting with troff.