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doc-kit is an opinionated Markdown parsing tool to structurally transform API documentation. It's the documentation toolchain behind the Node.js API reference, found at https://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/. This site is built by doc-kit, from its own repository. The pages you are reading were produced by the web generator.

📣 doc-kit is in beta. We'd like feedback within the issue log or by visiting the #nodejs-website Slack Channel on the OpenJS Slack.

doc-kit parses Markdown source files once, emitting output according to configured generators. You run any subset of them in one command, customize their logic, or even build your own generator.

Raw Markdown Files
        │
      [ast]           parse to MDAST
        │
    [metadata]        extract structured API metadata
        │
        ├─► [jsx-ast] ─► [web]       server-rendered site
        ├─► [legacy-html] ─► …-all   classic HTML
        ├─► [legacy-json] ─► …-all   JSON
        ├─► [json-simple]            simplified JSON
        ├─► [llms-txt]               llms.txt
        ├─► [man-page]               man pages
        ├─► [orama-db]               search index
        └─► [sitemap]                sitemap.xml

Only some of these are things you ask for by name. ast, metadata, and jsx-ast are internal stages — they run because something downstream depends on them, and they are not valid -t targets. Everything in the fan-out below metadata is a target you can pass to -t, and passing several at once reuses the one shared parse rather than repeating it. The full list is in the generators reference.

Because metadata is looking for an API document, the shape of your Markdown matters more than it would in a typical static-site generator. The most important rule:

Every page must begin with a level-one heading. The first # becomes the page's identity — its sidebar label and its output filename. A file without one produces no page at all, and the build still exits 0.

See the specification for the full input format.

A couple places doc-kit is already in use. Feel free to PR yours.