selfdoc 0.17.0

Code-aware static site generator with directive-based content extraction

selfdocumenting

Code-aware documentation site generator. Builds full static sites from Markdown templates and source code. Your code is the documentation -- directives in Markdown pull live content from your codebase at build time.

Supports Python, Go, and TypeScript/JavaScript. One runtime dependency (strictcli). Pure Python.

Install

pip install selfdocumenting

or via npm (delegates to Python under the hood):

npm install -g selfdocumenting

Requires Python 3.11+.

The npm package is named selfdocumenting (npm blocks selfdoc due to name similarity). The CLI command remains selfdoc.

Quick start

# Initialize in an existing project (auto-detects language)
selfdoc init

# Auto-generate API and CLI reference pages
selfdoc gen

# Edit docs/ pages -- add directives referencing your code

# Build HTML output
selfdoc build

# Validate directives, coverage, and SEO lint
selfdoc check

# Serve locally with live reload
selfdoc serve

Your selfdoc.json needs versions and locales -- even for a single-version, single-locale project:

{
  "language": "python",
  "source": ["src/"],
  "base_url": "https://my-project.example.com",
  "versions": [{"version": "1.0.0", "indexed": true}],
  "locales": [{"code": "en", "label": "English", "default": true}]
}

Features

• Directive syntax -- embed live API references, schemas, tests, and CLI help directly from source code (:-:, :<:, :>:)
• Auto-generated pages -- API reference and CLI docs from source code structure (selfdoc gen)
• Multi-version docs -- build from git tags, cached builds, version picker UI
• Localization -- parallel locale directories, hreflang tags, locale picker, per-locale sitemaps
• Monorepo support -- unified site builder combines multiple projects into one docs site
• Faceted search -- key=value filter syntax, 7 dimensions, chip UI, auto-injected version default
• Sandboxed data generation -- run scripts in bubblewrap isolation (selfdoc gen-data)
• Theming -- dark mode, accent colors, custom CSS overrides
• Search engines -- builtin, Fuse.js, or MiniSearch
• SEO -- 15+ lint rules, WCAG contrast validation, JSON-LD structured data, sitemaps
• Coverage tracking -- per-symbol documentation coverage with configurable thresholds
• Syntax highlighting -- build-time Pygments, code tabs, sortable tables
• Performance -- CSS/JS/HTML minification, critical CSS inlining, gzip and Brotli pre-compression
• Feeds and AI -- Atom feed, robots.txt with AI crawler controls, llms.txt / llms-full.txt
• Landing page -- hero section, tagline, and feature cards
• Live reload -- SSE-based dev server
• Auto-commit -- generated files committed automatically (prefers safegit)

Directive syntax

Directives are inline blocks in your Markdown templates. They get replaced with content extracted from your source code at build time.

:-: directive-name path="arg"

Self-closing directives use :-:. Block directives that wrap a body use :<: to open, :>: to close, with :=: and ::: to delimit sections inside. Directives inside fenced code blocks are ignored.

Built-in directives

Directive	Description
callout-danger	Styled danger callout block
callout-important	Styled important callout block
callout-note	Styled note callout block
callout-tip	Styled tip callout block
callout-warning	Styled warning callout block
code-help	Extract CLI help/usage text and flag definitions
code-test	Embed test source code (whole file or specific function)
list-features	Module summaries from docstring first lines
list-glossary	Definition list from Term: Definition lines
list-modules	List source modules with file paths and docstring summaries
list-tree	File/directory tree listing
prose-desc	Extract module/package docstring as prose text
ref	Extract module docstring, exported functions, and classes
table-commands	CLI command summary table from strictcli structure
table-config	Render a config file (JSON/TOML) as a key-value table
table-config-schema	Configuration field reference table from schema
table-dep	Dependencies table from pyproject.toml
table-directives	Table of all core built-in directives
table-endpoint	REST API endpoint table from OpenAPI spec
table-schema	Extract dataclass/struct fields as a markdown table
var	Interpolate project metadata value

Example -- embed the API docs for a Python module:

## API Reference

:-: ref path="selfdoc.config"

Example -- show a JSON schema as a table:

:-: table-schema path="selfdoc.json"

Custom directives

Register custom directives in selfdoc.json under the directives key. Each entry maps a directive name to a Python script (relative to project root) that exports a resolve(attrs, config, body) function returning a Markdown string.

{
  "directives": {
    "changelog": "scripts/changelog_directive.py"
  }
}

Script interface:

def resolve(attrs: dict, config: dict, body: list) -> str:
    """Return Markdown string to replace the directive block.

    attrs  -- directive attributes as str->str dict (e.g. {"path": "v1.0.0"})
    config -- the full selfdoc.json config dict
    body   -- body lines from the directive block (empty list for one-liners)
    """
    version = attrs.get("path")
    ...

Use in templates:

:-: changelog path="v1.0.0"

Custom directives take priority over built-in names.

Configuration

selfdoc.json at the project root:

{
  "language": "python",
  "source": ["selfdoc/"],
  "docs": "docs/",
  "output": "docs/_build/",
  "base_url": "https://my-project.example.com",
  "versions": [{"version": "1.0.0", "indexed": true}],
  "locales": [{"code": "en", "label": "English", "default": true}],
  "deploy": {
    "provider": "cloudflare-pages",
    "project": "my-docs"
  },
  "directives": {}
}

Field	Required	Description
source	yes	List of source entries to extract documentation from.
base_url	yes	Base URL of the generated site, used for canonical links and SEO.
version	no	Project version. When present, used by deploy instead of reading from pyproject.toml/package.json.
version_source	no	Manifest file to read the project version from.
docs	no	Directory containing Markdown documentation templates.
output	no	Output directory for generated HTML files.
theme	no	Visual theme for the generated site.
repo	no	GitHub repository URL shown in the site header.
lang	no	BCP 47 language tag for the site content (e.g. 'en', 'pt-BR').
description	no	Short description of the project, used in meta tags and SEO.
branch	no	Git branch used for source links in the generated site.
search	no	Search UI mode: icon button, full bar, or hidden.
search_engine	no	Client-side search engine implementation to use.
code_icons	no	Style of language icons shown on code blocks.
line_numbers	no	Show line numbers in code blocks.
run_button	no	Show a run button on code blocks for supported languages.
page_nav	no	Show previous/next navigation links between pages.
page_progress	no	Show a reading progress bar at the top of each page.
glossary	no	Auto-generate a glossary page from dfn terms.
feed_max_entries	no	Maximum number of entries in the Atom feed, sorted by most recent.
lint_ignore	no	List of lint rule IDs to suppress (e.g. 'SEO007', 'STALE001').
root_files	no	List of underscore-prefixed template paths in docs/ for root file generation.
redirects	no	Page-level redirects expanded across all locale/version combos.
deploy	no	Deployment configuration for publishing the generated site.
directives	no	Custom directive mappings from directive name to source file path.
author	no	Author information for meta tags and structured data.
feedback	no	Feedback collection configuration (at least one of webhook or ga required).
branding	no	Landing page branding and call-to-action configuration.
auto_detect	no	Automatic content detection settings for step guides and API entries.
gen	no	Configuration for the gen command.
gen_data	no	Configuration for the gen-data command.
versions	no	List of documentation versions to build.
locales	no	List of locales for multi-language documentation.
unified	no	Configuration for unified multi-project documentation.

selfdoc init auto-detects language and source paths from project files (pyproject.toml, go.mod, tsconfig.json, package.json).

Commands

Command	Description
init	Initialize selfdoc in the current project
build	Build the documentation site
serve	Serve the documentation site locally
deploy	Deploy the documentation site
check	Check documentation coverage and consistency
gen	Auto-generate documentation pages from project structure
gen-data	Generate data files by running sandboxed scripts

Deploy

Cloudflare Pages

Requires the Wrangler CLI installed and authenticated.

{
  "deploy": {
    "provider": "cloudflare-pages",
    "project": "my-docs-project"
  }
}

selfdoc build && selfdoc deploy

GitHub Pages

Pushes the output directory to the gh-pages branch via force-push.

{
  "deploy": {
    "provider": "github-pages"
  }
}

Enable GitHub Pages in your repo settings (source: gh-pages branch).

Integration with rlsbl

When rlsbl detects a selfdoc.json in the project, it can trigger selfdoc build and selfdoc deploy as part of the release lifecycle via the .rlsbl/hooks/post-release.sh hook.

Documentation

Full documentation at selfdoc.smmh.dev.

License

MIT