Using a portable minimal markdown dependency (such as cmark [1]) I think markdown can be quite a low barrier here. I personally do similar to what you have described on my blog, with an additional cmark conversion and find it quite simple [2].

[1] https://github.com/commonmark/cmark

[2] https://github.com/tiehuis/tiehuis.github.io/blob/38b0fd58a2...