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Introduction

Clay turns a folder of Markdown files into a fast, searchable documentation website. You write pages in Markdown, describe your site in one small configuration file, and Clay builds a static site that you can host anywhere: GitHub Pages, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages or any web server.

This website is itself a Clay site. Every page you read here is a Markdown file in the example repository, and the repository doubles as a reference you can copy from.

#What you get

Feature	What it means for your readers
Navigation	A sidebar built from your folders, breadcrumbs, and previous/next links on every page
Search	Full-text search over every page and section, with typo tolerance and highlighted matches
Code	Syntax highlighting for over 200 languages, line highlights, diffs and a copy button
Fast pages	Every page is pre-rendered to HTML, so it loads instantly and works without JavaScript
Search engines	Titles, descriptions, canonical links, a sitemap and structured data, out of the box
Light and dark	Follows the reader’s system setting, with a toggle that remembers their choice
Versions	Keep the docs of older releases online, with a version switcher
Languages	Translate pages one by one; untranslated pages fall back to the original
Phones	A layout that works on small screens, with a navigation drawer

#How it works

A Clay project is a folder with a configuration file and your docs:

my-project/
├── clay.yaml        # site title and links
└── docs/            # your Markdown pages, images and files
    └── index.md     # optional: the start page

You work with three commands:

npx clay dev       # live preview while you write
npx clay build     # build the static site into publish/public
npx clay preview   # check the build the way a web host serves it

Clay is a single npm package, clay-doc. It builds on Nuxt and Vue, but you never have to touch either: there is no theme to set up and no code to write.

#Where to go next

New to Clay? Start with the installation and the quick start.
Writing pages? See pages, Markdown and code blocks.
Setting up a site? The clay.yaml reference lists every option.
Publishing? Follow GitHub Pages or other hosts.
Coming from Clay 1 and Clay Oven? Read migrating from Clay 1.