docs-site-package

name

docs-site-package

description

How a documentation site package in pdocs (code/packages/example) is put together — the playbook, the component descriptor, the docs/ tree, the UI bundle link, and the Nx/pnpm wiring that makes `just dev` and `just build-site` work. USE WHEN creating a new site package, editing antora-playbook.yml or docs/antora.yml, changing a site's title, start page, output dir or content source, pointing a site at a different UI bundle, setting up multi-version docs (release tags, a stable/prerelease branch pair, the version dropdown, `urls.latest_version_segment`), or debugging a site that builds with zero pages, a missing start page or a stale UI. EXAMPLES: 'add a new docs site', 'the site builds but has no pages', 'start page not found', 'my UI change doesn't show up in the site', 'point this site at a published bundle', 'why is the content path repo-root relative', 'just dev says port in use', 'set up docs versioning', 'add a stable vs prerelease toggle', 'why does the version dropdown only show one entry'.

Documentation site packages

code/packages/example is a site package: an Antora playbook plus the AsciiDoc it builds, wired into the workspace so Nx builds the UI bundle first. It is currently the only one — code/packages/starter, the minimal site meant to be copied, was removed (its workspace:* deps have no standalone equivalent; see reference/new-site.md). The surviving starter is code/packages/cli/templates/starter, bundled into @inditextech/pdocs-cli for pdocs new to scaffold a site outside this monorepo — a deliberately simpler, dependency-free shape (plain Antora default UI), not something to copy in here.

This skill is the package level: playbook, descriptor, wiring, commands. For what to write inside docs/ (pages, nav, xrefs, includes, extensions) read asciidoc; for the UI those sites render through, read ui-bundle-anatomy.

Layout

code/packages/<site>/
  package.json              name @inditextech/pdocs-<site>, private, deps: ui-bundle
  antora-playbook.yml       build entry point — the only Antora config
  docs/
    antora.yml              component descriptor: name, title, version, nav
    modules/ROOT/
      nav.adoc              navigation tree
      pages/*.adoc          one page per site URL
  build/site/               generated, gitignored — the built site

No project.json: Nx infers build, dev and clean from the package.json scripts, and targetDefaults in code/nx.json supplies caching (build is cached with output {projectRoot}/build; dev and clean are not).

The four names that must agree

A site builds to zero pages, or dies on "start page not found", when these drift apart.

value	lives in	must match
component name (example)	docs/antora.yml → name	the <component>:: prefix of site.start_page. It is also the site's first URL segment — weavejs in /weavejs/main/… — and has nothing to do with the docs/ directory
start page (index.adoc)	playbook → site.start_page	a real file under modules/ROOT/pages/
content path	playbook → content.sources[].start_path	the directory holding docs/antora.yml, relative to the repository root
package name (pdocs-<site>)	package.json → name	the directory name — just dev <site> interpolates both

The playbook

antora-playbook.yml is the whole build. The shape both sites share, and why:

key	value here	why
site.title	per site	rendered in the header
site.url	commented out	required for sitemap and canonical links; only set for a real deployment
site.start_page	<component>::index.adoc	what / redirects to
content.sources[].url	../../..	the git repository, not a directory of files
content.sources[].start_path	code/packages/<site>/docs	resolved from the repo root, hence fully qualified
content.sources[].branches	HEAD	whatever is checked out, so uncommitted edits are picked up
ui.bundle.url	../ui-bundle/build/ui-bundle.zip	the sibling package's unversioned copy
ui.bundle.snapshot	true	local build, changes constantly — do not cache it
output.dir	build/site	matches the Nx outputs glob; changing it breaks caching
output.clean	true	Antora otherwise leaves whatever is already in the output directory, so a renamed component or a deleted page keeps being served from a previous build
runtime.log.failure_level	warn	a broken xref fails the build instead of shipping a gap
asciidoc.attributes	experimental, icons: font, sectanchors, idprefix: '', idseparator: '-'	see asciidoc skill for what each enables

url: ./../../.. is the single most surprising line: Antora clones or reads a git repository, so start_path is relative to the repository root regardless of where the playbook sits. In a repository where the playbook is at the root, the source collapses to url: . / start_path: docs.

Full key-by-key map, including the keys neither site sets yet (multiple sources, versioned branches, extensions, urls.*): reference/playbook.md.

Descriptor keys that are not Antora's

site.keys in the playbook is declared primitive-map — flat primitives only — and convict rejects any playbook key outside its schema, so anything structured a site needs is authored in docs/antora.yml and read by @inditextech/pdocs-antora-extensions (registered under antora.extensions). Antora itself drops these keys; the extension reads them from the raw aggregate before it does.

key	what it does
nav_modules	per-module title, description and sprite icon for the side menu's module switcher. A list, never a map: camelCaseKeys rewrites nested keys and would rename every kebab-case module
nav_modules[].switcher: false	annotate a navigation tree without offering it as a module to switch to — what a landing page's own modules/ROOT/nav.adoc is
nav_modules[].start_page	where the switcher and the footer send someone who picks that module; a page ID. Defaults to the first internal page in its navigation
footer	the site footer's authored link groups: footer.groups[].links[].{text,url}. Group 1 is the footer's links column; group 2 is used for the modules column only on a site with fewer than two navigable modules

url in a footer link is either a page ID — the same string you would write inside xref:…[], resolved against that component — or a literal URL. A page ID that resolves to nothing is dropped with a warning rather than rendered as a dead link.

A page can also borrow another module's navigation with :page-nav-module:, which is how a landing in ROOT gets a side menu at all. See the ui-bundle-anatomy skill.

Constraints that fail silently

• Antora needs at least one commit. It reads content from git. A repository with no history resolves the content source to nothing and the site builds with zero pages, reported only as Start page specified for site not found: <site>::index.adoc. just doctor checks for this.
• Uncommitted changes are picked up, untracked-and-ignored files are not. branches: HEAD reads the worktree, but anything matched by .gitignore is invisible to the build.
• The UI bundle must exist before the site builds. The workspace:* dependency plus dependsOn: ["^build"] makes Nx build it first — which is why just dev and just build-site go through Nx and never call antora directly.
• snapshot: true is what makes UI edits visible. Without it Antora caches the bundle in .cache and every rebuild renders the stale UI. It must flip to false when the URL points at a published, immutable bundle.
• --fetch belongs to the one-off build only. package.json's build script passes it; scripts/dev.mjs deliberately omits it, because on a watch loop it would re-fetch every remote content source on every keystroke.
• output.dir is duplicated in nx.json. Nx caches {projectRoot}/build. Point the playbook elsewhere and the build still works, once, then serves cached emptiness.
• Versions move in lockstep. just bump rewrites the workspace root and all three packages to one version. A site package's version is not independently meaningful.
• The dev server is not Nx-managed. just dev builds through Nx, then execs pnpm -C packages/<site> run dev. EADDRINUSE on 5000 is usually a second dev server — or, on macOS, the AirPlay receiver. just dev <site> <port> takes a second port.

Commands

Everything runs from anywhere via just; the raw form needs code/ as the working directory.

command	does
just dev example	Nx build, then serve build/site on :5000 with rebuild-and-reload
just dev <site> <port>	same, with an explicit second port — for a second site package running alongside
just build-site example	nx run @inditextech/pdocs-example:build
just build	every package, UI bundle included
just preview-ui	UI-only preview on :5252 — prefer it when content is not what changed
pnpm -C packages/example run build	raw Antora run, no Nx, no UI rebuild

scripts/dev.mjs (dependency-free, shared by every site package) watches docs/, antora-playbook.yml and ../ui-bundle/src. A UI change rebuilds the bundle and the site; a content change rebuilds the site only. A failed rebuild keeps serving the previous output rather than a half-written site. Reload is an SSE stream plus a snippet injected into HTML responses as they are served — nothing is written into the built site.

Adding a site

No in-workspace template to copy right now — base a new package on example and rename in four places. Details, and why starter isn't that template anymore: reference/new-site.md.

Versioning a site

example is versioned under standalone (Stable + Prerelease) (GH #80): main permanently aggregates as the prerelease version, and a rolling stable tag — force-moved to a fresh commit on each release by the single pdocs-release.yml workflow template (.github/workflows/ in a site scaffolded by pdocs new, which detects standalone vs versioned from docs/antora-playbook.yml's own content.sources[] tags and branches its steps accordingly) — aggregates as the stable version. The other supported shape, versioned (Full History) — every release tag kept forever, main unchanged — that same workflow already handles, but is not wired up on example or anywhere else yet (GH #81). Full guidance, playbook examples and URL-routing notes (urls.latest_version_segment): reference/versioning-modes.md.

Either mode's content.sources[] names refs (main/stable/v*) that a PR checkout — detached HEAD or a feature branch — doesn't have. A site scaffolded by pdocs new gets a second playbook, antora-playbook.pr-verify.yml (one source, branches: HEAD, nothing version-specific), and pdocs-pr-verify.yml builds with it on every PR instead of the real antora-playbook.yml — always validating whatever the PR actually changed, regardless of which mode (or none) the site has adopted. example's own equivalent is antora-playbook.local.yml, wired into its build script (package.json) so pnpm build — what pr-verify.yml runs — never depends on main/stable either; its antora-playbook.yml is built explicitly by docs.yml and the build:publish script instead.

Reference

• reference/playbook.md — every playbook key that matters here, the ones deliberately unset, and how to retarget the UI bundle for a real deployment.
• reference/new-site.md — creating a new site package, and extracting one into a repository of its own.
• reference/versioning-modes.md — the two docs versioning modes (versioned: full history via release tags, standalone: stable + prerelease), with antora.yml/playbook examples for each, how the single pdocs-release.yml detects which mode a site is on and cuts a release either way (manually, or automatically on a docs/release-labelled PR merge), the force-republish and docs/.release-version auto-bump mechanics, and how pdocs-pr-verify.yml / antora-playbook.pr-verify.yml keep PR builds mode-agnostic.