Prelude Docs

Prelude docs in a consumer repo

Treat the user's argument as the task description (e.g. "add a recipes page under a Guides group"), not a shell command. Manage the requested Markdown sources and existing prelude.docs.* configuration; preserve unrelated settings.

Prerequisite: the repo imports prelude.flakeModules.default (see the prelude-install skill). The docs viewer has no enable flag — it activates automatically when prelude.docs.pages is non-empty, which also installs the docs command, its x docs dispatch, and the d accelerator.

Authored pages

prelude.docs.pages is a nav tree in declaration order. Every node is exactly one of leaf / group / generate:

prelude.docs.pages = [
  { text = ./docs/getting-started.md; }        # leaf
  { title = "Guides";                          # group: nests, renders no body
    children = [ { text = ./docs/guides/a.md; } ]; }
];

• Leaf { text = <markdown path>; } — the file's first H1 labels the sidebar; an optional title overrides it.
• Group { title; children; } — sidebar-only nesting. A hand-written group should not set text (that field is mdSplit provenance, not a body).
• text accepts any store path, so external dependency docs need no vendoring: { text = inputs.some-dep + "/docs/api.md"; } renders the upstream page at your flake's pinned revision.

README as the landing page

prelude.docs.rootReadme = ./README.md;

When a leaf's text equals rootReadme (exact path match, not basename), the viewer styles it as the project hero: FIGlet wordmark of prelude.project plus the HTML intro, with the body kept as authored. To also give the README's H2 sections their own sidebar entries:

prelude.docs.pages = [
  (inputs.prelude.lib.mdSplit ./README.md)
  { text = ./docs/getting-started.md; }
];

prelude.lib.mdSplit (the flake's lib output) splits one Markdown file at fence-aware H2 boundaries into { title; text; children; } — preamble first, one leaf per H2. The preamble leaf is renamed to the project name and gets the README hero when its provenance matches rootReadme. It accepts a path, a path string, or raw Markdown.

Generated option docs

Only when the project defines its own module options. Never hand-maintain an option table — generate it from the evaluated option tree:

prelude.docs.nixosOptions = {
  inherit (eval) options;   # lib.evalModules side-eval, not the live flake-parts
  transformOptions = o: o // { declarations = []; };  # any nixosOptionsDoc arg
};
prelude.docs.pages = [ /* … */ { generate = "nixosOptions"; title = "Options"; } ];

• Side-evaluate options with lib.evalModules { modules = [ … ]; } — closing over the live flake-parts option tree risks cycles and noise.
• split = "allLeaves" (default): nested sidebar, one leaf per terminal option. split = "shallow": one full pkgs.nixosOptionsDoc page.
• Never JSON-serialize the nixosOptions value; it feeds nixosOptionsDoc directly and only Markdown store paths enter the bundle.

Authored vs generated: authored leaves/groups are prose the repo maintains; generate nodes derive from option definitions at build time and are never edited by hand. Upstream's checked-in docs/reference/options.md is a maintainer artifact. Do not assume downstream has x sync-docs; follow its own generation workflow when one exists.

Verify

Make newly referenced files visible to Git-backed flake evaluation by staging only the intended files; no commit is required. Preserve existing docs pages when merging the examples above.

From the repo root, without entering the devshell:

nix build .#prelude-docs   # evaluates the pages tree and builds the bundle
./result/bin/docs 1        # prints leaf 1 non-interactively

Inside the devshell (nix develop):

• docs or x docs — TUI: digits 1–9 jump top-level pages, Tab/Shift-Tab moves focus, j/k scroll, q quits.
• docs <page> prints one window; page is a 1-based depth-first leaf index (groups are not pages). docs next / docs prev page through. Piped output strips ANSI, so this works in scripts and CI logs.

Reference (pin to your flake.lock's github:darkmatter/prelude revision): https://github.com/darkmatter/prelude — docs/your-own-repo.md (consumer wiring), docs/configuration.md, and docs/reference/options.md under prelude.docs.*. For catalogue command edits see the prelude-just skill; x --list shows the installed surface.