# The developer documentation stack (https://devrel.directory/stacks/developer-docs) **What do I actually need to publish developer docs people can use?** Six decisions between an empty repository and documentation that developers, search engines, and coding agents can all read: where the docs live, how the API reference gets generated, and how you find out what people actually read. Curated shortlist of 16 tools across 6 decisions, last read against the live products on 2026-07-27. Live from devrel.directory as of 2026-07-27. ## 1. Decide where the docs live This is the decision everything else inherits, and the expensive one to reverse. The split that matters is not features but who edits: a static-site generator keeps docs in the same repository as the code and makes review a pull request, while a hosted platform gives non-engineers a browser editor and takes the build off your plate. Pick the first if your writers already live in git, the second if waiting on an engineer to merge a typo fix would kill the docs. - [Docusaurus](https://devrel.directory/directory/docusaurus.md): Open-source docs framework from Meta, the workhorse of OSS documentation sites. - [Starlight](https://devrel.directory/directory/starlight.md): Astro's documentation framework with search, i18n, and theming out of the box; a fast-growing Docusaurus alternative. - [Read the Docs](https://devrel.directory/directory/read-the-docs.md): Automated building, versioning, and hosting of docs from Git; the long-standing home of open-source documentation. - [Mintlify](https://devrel.directory/directory/mintlify.md): Documentation platform with built-in analytics and AI features; now positioning toward agents and self-updating documentation. - [GitBook](https://devrel.directory/directory/gitbook.md): Documentation platform with Git sync for product and developer docs, now emphasizing AI-powered knowledge management and question answering. ## 2. Generate the API reference instead of writing it Hand-written endpoint tables go stale the first time someone ships a field, and nobody notices until a developer files a bug against your own docs. If you have an OpenAPI description, one of these renders it and re-renders it on every change, which turns reference accuracy into a build step rather than a discipline. - [Scalar](https://devrel.directory/directory/scalar.md): Open-source API reference and request client that renders OpenAPI specs into interactive docs, with SDKs and API registry. - [Redocly](https://devrel.directory/directory/redocly.md): Maker of Redoc, the long-standing OpenAPI reference renderer, plus a full API docs platform. - [Fern](https://devrel.directory/directory/fern.md): Generates SDKs and a docs site from an OpenAPI spec, so a small team can ship a full developer portal. - [Bump.sh](https://devrel.directory/directory/bump-sh.md): API documentation platform that diffs every deploy and generates changelogs, now also offering MCP server documentation for AI agents. - [ReadMe](https://devrel.directory/directory/readme.md): Interactive API documentation hubs with real-time API logs and guides. ## 3. Make the prose consistent without a style meeting Once more than one person writes, the docs drift: two spellings of your product name, three ways to introduce a code block, an inconsistent voice that reads as carelessness. A prose linter in CI settles that argument once, in a config file, and then stops re-litigating it in every review. - [Vale](https://devrel.directory/directory/vale.md): Command-line prose linter that enforces a docs style guide in CI; keeps large doc sets consistent. ## 4. Make the docs searchable on the page Site search is how most people navigate documentation, and the built-in search that ships with a static generator is usually a client-side index that degrades badly past a few hundred pages. This is the step most teams skip and then blame the information architecture for. - [Algolia DocSearch](https://devrel.directory/directory/algolia-docsearch.md): Free hosted search for open-source docs sites; the default search layer on thousands of developer docs. ## 5. Serve the docs to assistants, not just to browsers Developers increasingly ask a question rather than browse a nav tree, and they ask it of an assistant as often as of your site. Two different jobs hide in this step: answering questions on your own pages, and making your content fetchable by the coding agent already open in someone's editor. Both answer over your existing docs, so this is cheap if the previous four steps went well and actively harmful if they did not - an assistant grounded in stale docs is a faster way to be wrong. Publishing an llms.txt index and Markdown twins of your pages is the part you can do yourself, without buying anything. - [kapa.ai](https://devrel.directory/directory/kapa-ai.md): AI answer widget trained on your docs and community threads; deflects developer questions with cited answers. - [Context7](https://devrel.directory/directory/context7.md): Serves version-specific library docs to AI coding tools over MCP; getting indexed here is docs distribution now. ## 6. Find out what people actually read Docs analytics answers one question worth the setup: which page do people land on before they give up. Both of these are privacy-respecting enough to run on a docs site without a consent banner in front of the content, which matters because a cookie wall on documentation is its own bounce rate. - [Plausible](https://devrel.directory/directory/plausible.md): Lightweight, privacy-first web analytics for docs and blogs; no cookie banner needed for developer audiences. - [PostHog](https://devrel.directory/directory/posthog.md): Open-source product analytics platform with AI-powered features for automated debugging and code generation. ## Method These are shortlists, not rankings. Every tool named here has its own directory entry with the facts it publishes and the date they were checked, and the order within a step is the order it was written in, not a verdict about which is better. We do not run these tools in production and we take no money for inclusion. Where a step has two options that genuinely suit different situations, it says which is which instead of picking one. Background reading: https://devrel.directory/docs/ai-era/docs-for-llms.md ## Open roles doing this work 3 currently listed under documentation roles: - Senior Technical Writer at Camunda (Remote): https://devrel.directory/jobs/camunda-senior-technical-writer-2026-07 - Technical Writer at Firecrawl (Hybrid (San Francisco, CA)): https://devrel.directory/jobs/firecrawl-technical-writer-2026-07 - Technical Writer at Nebius (Remote (EMEA)): https://devrel.directory/jobs/nebius-technical-writer-2026-07 ## Upcoming events on these topics - API World (Santa Clara, CA), 2026-09-01: https://devrel.directory/events/api-world-2026 - Write the Docs Berlin (Berlin, Germany), 2026-09-06: https://devrel.directory/events/write-the-docs-berlin-2026 - API Conference NYC (Online), 2026-09-28: https://devrel.directory/events/api-conference-nyc-2026 - Apidays London (London, United Kingdom), 2026-09-30: https://devrel.directory/events/apidays-london-2026 - The Nordic APIs UnConference (Stockholm, Sweden), 2026-10-12: https://devrel.directory/events/the-nordic-apis-unconference-2026 - Platform Summit (Stockholm, Sweden), 2026-10-13: https://devrel.directory/events/platform-summit-2026