You can also make a markdown badge manually. And just maintain it when you do change it.
I do that on my README and that work work on a versions.md page or whatever.
The shields.io service is great for generating badges. It let’s you create a badge that dynamically references a package name in package.json and tells you the version but it does not support that for gems.
If hosting on Github Pages is an option for you, you could also use the github-metadata gem which exposes the site.github namespace w/in your Jekyll project.
It’ll expose all your gem versions, so will definitely cover your jekyll.version example e.g. via site.github.versions.jekyll.
Not sure if it captures all the variables you need, but the full list can be found here: