Ardo

React docs, baked into plain HTML.

Documentation · Getting Started · Components · API Reference

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Ardo is a static site generator for React projects. Guides in Markdown and MDX, an API reference read from your TypeScript, and search, all prerendered at build time by native engines. Every page ships as plain HTML that any static host can serve.

The easy way in

Hand this sentence to your coding agent, in a fresh repository or one you already have:

Set up Ardo in this repository following https://ardo-docs.dev/llms.txt.

The link points it to Ardo's Agent Instructions. It adapts the tested Basic example and tells you how typecheck, tests, and build went. You review the result like any other pull request. Prefer to do it by hand? Follow the manual installation.

How it works

1. Write it. Markdown and MDX guides, your own React components and layouts, API reference from TypeScript, and typed content collections.
2. Bake it. Rust engines compile your Markdown and color every code block, TypeScript 7 reads your types, and Vite bundles the rest. Search index, sitemap, and llms.txt come out of the same oven.
3. Serve it. Every page is complete HTML. Search engines see everything, readers get the content on the first request, and any static host will do.

A whole site starts with one line in app/root.tsx:

import { ArdoRoot } from "ardo/ui"

export default function Root() {
  return <ArdoRoot />
}

That renders a header with search, a sidebar built from your folders, dark mode, and a footer. Theming starts with three hues in the theme prop of <ArdoRoot> in app/root.tsx.

Is Ardo your kind of bird?

A great fit if:

• your product or library is built with React and TypeScript;
• docs should live in your repository and go through review;
• you want prerendered pages and little work in the browser.

Maybe not if:

• you want prose only, without React (try Starlight or VitePress);
• you need hosted editing and analytics (a hosted platform does that).

See how Ardo compares to Docusaurus, Starlight, VitePress, Nextra, Fumadocs, and Mintlify.

Under the hood

Ardo stands on Vite, TypeScript 7, and Oxc. Two engines come from our own workshop, written in Rust: Ferromark compiles Markdown and MDX, and Ferriki highlights every code block at build time.

The API reference is TypeDoc, rethought for React: TypeScript 7's native compiler reads your types, and Ardo turns your exports into pages, with components and their props, hooks, and types. In the Ardo 6.0 benchmark (October 29), it generated 142 Markdown pages from 192 exports in 655 ms (median, Apple M1 Ultra). This measures source-to-Markdown generation with a fresh compiler session; it excludes the documentation-site build.

Package

ardo is the one package: CLI, Vite integration, runtime, and theme components. Release history lives in packages/ardo/CHANGELOG.md, and Releases lists what is shipped, experimental, and planned.

Development

git clone https://github.com/sebastian-software/ardo.git
cd ardo
pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm docs:dev

• pnpm test runs the unit and integration tests.
• pnpm typecheck type-checks all packages.
• pnpm docs:build builds the documentation site.
• pnpm test:e2e runs the Playwright checks against the documentation site.

CONTRIBUTING.md explains the workflow, the tests, and the architecture notes.

License

MIT. The built-in section and content icons are from Streamline and come under their own terms.

Maintaining this README

Edit README.md.src, then run mise run readme:write. See README setup and checks for the contributor workflow.

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