Static hosting

Deployment•4 min read||

DocsLit builds a standard static site that you can deploy to any hosting provider. Run docslit build and upload the dist/ directory.

Build your site

docslit build

This generates a dist/ directory with HTML pages, a search index, sitemap, and AI discovery files.

Add `"url": "https://docs.example.com"` to your `docslit.json` before building. This enables absolute URLs in your sitemap and `llms.txt`.

Deploy recipes

Generate host-specific config files from the CLI:

docslit deploy --github-pages
docslit deploy --netlify
docslit deploy --cloudflare

For GitHub project sites (https://user.github.io/repo/), set "basePath": "/repo" in docslit.json so asset and navigation URLs stay correct.

Deploy to a hosting provider

npm install -g vercel

docslit build
cd dist
vercel --prod

Alternatively, connect your git repository to Vercel and set the build command to docslit build with the output directory set to dist.

npm install -g netlify-cli

docslit build
netlify deploy --prod --dir=dist

For continuous deployment, connect your repository and set the build command to docslit build with the publish directory set to dist.

Create .github/workflows/deploy.yml:

name: Deploy docs
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      pages: write
      id-token: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - run: npm install -g docslit
      - run: docslit build
      - uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: dist
      - uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

Go to your repository Settings > Pages and set the source to GitHub Actions.

docslit build
aws s3 sync dist/ s3://your-bucket-name --delete

Enable static website hosting on your S3 bucket and set index.html as the index document. Optionally, put CloudFront in front for HTTPS and caching.

What gets deployed

Every build produces these files:

File	Purpose
`index.html`	App shell with navigation and components
`docs/*.html`	Pre-rendered pages for SEO
`docs/*.md`	Raw Markdown for programmatic access
`search-index.json`	Client-side full-text search
`sitemap.xml`	Search engine sitemap
`robots.txt`	Crawler directives
`llms.txt`	AI agent discovery index
`llms-full.txt`	Complete docs as plain text
`_middleware.js`	Content negotiation for AI agents (Cloudflare/Netlify)
`vercel.json`	Content negotiation for AI agents (Vercel)
`.well-known/agent.json`	Machine-readable agent discovery
`mcp-server.js`	MCP server for AI tool integration
`pdf/`	Chapter, page, and full documentation PDFs (when built with `--pdf`)

Run docslit build --pdf to generate downloadable PDF manuals alongside your HTML site. See Chapter PDF export.

Custom output directory

Use the --out flag to change the output directory:

docslit build --out public