Features

Features

Chronicle is a self-hosted documentation platform built with Vite + Nitro.

Content

  • MDX support — write documentation in MDX with React component embedding
  • Frontmatter — title, short, description, identifiers, order, icon, lastModified, authors, draft
  • Directory metadata — meta.json for folder titles, ordering, and sidebar config
  • Remark plugins — directives, admonitions, image resolution, link resolution, mermaid, reading time
  • Syntax highlighting — powered by Shiki via Apsara CodeBlock
  • Versioning — multiple documentation versions with URL-based routing

API Reference

  • OpenAPI / Swagger support — auto-generates API reference pages from specs (OpenAPI 3.x and Swagger 2.0)
  • Read-only overview — field names, types, required badges, examples, response schemas
  • Playground dialog — test requests with editable fields, JSON body editor, auth switching
  • Auth types — API Key, Bearer Token, Basic Auth (auto-detected from spec securitySchemes)
  • Code snippets — cURL, Python, Go, TypeScript with language switcher
  • Response panel — status code tabs with JSON syntax highlighting
  • .md export — every API endpoint has a .md URL with full documentation
  • Sidebar — auto-generated from file structure, configurable via meta.json
  • Breadcrumbs — shows path hierarchy for docs and API pages
  • Prev/Next — arrow navigation between pages and API endpoints
  • Search — full-text search with SQLite FTS5 across titles, headings, and body content
  • Folder sorting — via order in meta.json
  • Page sorting — via order in frontmatter or pages array in meta.json

Themes

  • Default theme — sidebar + content layout with sub-navigation bar
  • Paper theme — book-style single-column with reading progress
  • Fanfold theme — continuous-form line printer paper, monospace throughout
  • Dark/light mode — system preference or manual toggle

SEO & AI

  • Meta tags — auto-generated title, description, Open Graph, Twitter Card
  • Sitemap — auto-generated sitemap.xml
  • robots.txt — auto-generated
  • llms.txt — AI-discoverable documentation index
  • .md URLs — every page (docs and API) has a markdown URL for AI tools
  • Open in AI — copy as markdown, open in ChatGPT or Claude

Developer Experience

  • CLI — chronicle dev, chronicle build, chronicle start
  • Hot reload — instant updates during development
  • Monorepo support — works as a package in monorepos
  • Docker support — containerized deployment
  • Zod-validated config — chronicle.yaml with schema validation

Redirects

Configure URL redirects in chronicle.yaml for migrating old routes.

redirects:
  - from: /old-page
    to: /docs/getting-started
  - from: /legacy/api
    to: /apis
    permanent: true
  • permanent: false (default) — 307 temporary redirect
  • permanent: true — 308 permanent redirect

See Configuration for full reference.

Sorting

Pages

Add order to frontmatter. Lower numbers appear first.

---
title: Introduction
order: 1
---

Or use pages array in meta.json:

{
  "pages": ["introduction", "installation", "configuration"]
}

Folders

Add order to the folder's meta.json:

{
  "title": "Getting Started",
  "order": 1
}

Folder sorting is controlled only by meta.json order. The index page frontmatter order does not affect folder position.

Markdown URLs

Every page has a .md URL that returns raw markdown:

  • Docs pages — /{slug}.md returns the raw MDX content
  • API endpoints — /apis/{spec}/{operationId}.md generates markdown with parameters, examples, responses, and cURL
curl https://docs.example.com/docs/getting-started.md
curl https://docs.example.com/apis/petstore/findPetsByStatus.md

The "Open in AI" dropdown uses these URLs to copy markdown, open in ChatGPT, or open in Claude.

API Reference Page

Overview

The read-only overview shows endpoint title, method badge, path, authorisation fields, query/path parameters, request body, and response schemas. The right column has code snippets and response JSON.

Playground

Click Test request in the navbar to open the playground dialog with editable fields, JSON body editor, auth type switching, and live response with status and timing.

View Documentation

If the OpenAPI spec has externalDocs, a View documentation button appears in the navbar.

Health & Readiness

  • GET /api/health — liveness probe, always returns 200
  • GET /api/ready — readiness probe, returns 200 when search index is built, 503 otherwise
CLI CommandsConfiguration