farol

docs, lit. Forged in Rust. Lit for life.

Fast, plugin-first documentation generator. Rust core. Python-friendly. Apache-2.0, free forever.

Status: pre-alpha.

Why farol

A lighthouse - a farol - is built of iron and lit to guide.

That is what a docs site should be: a structure that stands on its own, and a beam that points the reader home. Existing tools fail at one or both. MkDocs is Python and slow; Material for MkDocs lives downstream of an owner's roadmap; Zensical gates features behind paid tiers; Docusaurus and Starlight ship JavaScript runtimes to render static prose; Hugo is fast but hostile to extension; Marmite is lovely but blog-first and AGPL.

farol is built for docs, in Rust, and lit by Python. The iron is fast. The beam is ergonomic. Both are free, forever.

Design principles

1. Fast by default. 10k pages under 3 seconds cold, under 200ms warm. Incremental rebuild with a persistent dependency graph.
2. Plugins are first-class, not a bolt-on. Every builtin feature uses the same public plugin API the community uses.
3. Python for plugin authors, Rust for the engine. pip install farol-plugin-foo is all a user should need.
4. Free forever, legally durable. Apache-2.0, no CLA, trademark separated. The code cannot be rug-pulled, relicensed, or quietly closed.
5. i18n and versioning are core, not plugins. They shape the routing graph and belong in the engine.
6. No JS framework in the output. Static HTML, CSS, and small islands of vanilla JS. No React. No hydration.
7. Great default theme. One polished theme ships with the binary. Community themes distribute as pip packages.
8. Honest errors. Every parse, config, or render error points at the file, line, and column.

Install

pip install farol

A pre-built wheel with the Rust engine embedded (no Rust toolchain required on your side).

Quick start

farol new my-docs
cd my-docs
farol serve

Open http://localhost:8000. Edit a .md file. The browser refreshes in milliseconds.

Plugins in ten lines

# farol_plugin_wave/__init__.py
from farol import hookimpl

@hookimpl
def on_page_markdown(markdown, page, config):
    return markdown.replace(":wave:", "👋")

Register in pyproject.toml:

[project.entry-points."farol.plugins"]
wave = "farol_plugin_wave"

pip install farol-plugin-wave and it's picked up automatically. No base class, no manifest, no setup step.

Scaffold a new plugin in one command:

farol plugin new my-plugin

Configuration

# farol.toml
site_name = "My Docs"
site_url  = "https://docs.example.com"

[theme]
name    = "default"
palette = "slate"
primary = "indigo"

[i18n]
default   = "en"
languages = ["en", "pt-BR", "es"]

[versioning]
current  = "v2.1"
versions = ["v2.1", "v2.0", "v1.9"]

[search]
stemming = "auto"
fuzzy    = true

[plugins]
enabled  = ["search", "sitemap", "admonitions", "code-copy"]
disabled = ["rss"]

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      farol CLI                          │
│         (Rust, distributed via pip as wheel)            │
└────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────┘
                     │
     ┌───────────────┴───────────────┐
     │                               │
┌────▼─────────┐            ┌────────▼────────────┐
│  Core (Rust) │            │  Plugin runtime     │
│              │            │  (PyO3 + pluggy)    │
│ - Parser     │   hooks    │                     │
│ - Graph      ├───────────►│  @hookimpl          │
│ - Cache      │            │  def on_page_md(…)  │
│ - Renderer   │            │                     │
│ - Search     │            │  Discovered via     │
│ - i18n       │            │  entry_points       │
│ - Versioning │            │                     │
└──────────────┘            └─────────────────────┘

Builtin plugins

Analytics, comments, and SaaS integrations are community plugins, not builtins. The core stays neutral.

Default theme

One polished theme ships with the binary. Layouts: default, landing, blog, api. Light and dark, responsive, config-driven colors. Template engine: MiniJinja (Jinja2-compatible - Material for MkDocs templates port with minimal work).

Users can override individual templates in overrides/ without forking the theme. Community themes are pip packages that may extends = "default" and override only what they need.

JavaScript budget for the theme: under 15 KB gzipped, all vanilla, zero framework. Works with JS disabled except for search and switchers.

Roadmap

Governance

• Apache-2.0. Patent grant included.
• No CLA. Contributions stay with their authors.
• Trademark separate from code. The name "farol" and the logo are protected; the code is free. Forks are welcome; misleading "official" forks are not.
• RFC process for breaking plugin-API changes, with six-month deprecation on major bumps.
• Hook signature stability guaranteed across minor versions.

Non-goals

• Replacing full-featured SSGs like Next.js or Astro. farol is docs-shaped.
• Arbitrary React or Vue components inside content. MDX-style mixing is out.
• A hosted service. farol builds static output; host it wherever.
• Paid tiers. Ever.

Origin

The word farol comes from Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria - the first structure built to guide travelers home. Modern lighthouses are iron towers; the mirrors that first focused their flame were polished bronze. Metal, shaped to point the way.

farol is forged in ferrumio - a foundry of Rust-powered developer tools. From the same forge as pydynox, farol is the piece built to light the path.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.