Quick start

This gets you from nothing to a running site. It takes about two minutes.

Install

bun add @raystack/chronicle

Create a project

chronicle init

That writes three things:

• chronicle.yaml — your site config
• content/docs/ — a content directory with a sample index.mdx
• .gitignore — entries for node_modules, dist and .output

Already have a docs folder you want to keep? Point init at it instead of letting it make a new one:

chronicle init -c docs

Nothing is overwritten. If the directory already has files, the sample page is skipped. See Move an existing docs site for the longer version.

Start the dev server

chronicle dev

Your site is at http://localhost:3000. Edit a page and the browser updates without a reload.

Write a page

Create content/docs/hello.mdx:

---
title: Hello
description: My first page.
order: 2
---

This is a page. It lives at `/docs/hello`.

## A section

Sections use `##` and below. The heading above the article comes from `title`,
so a page never needs its own `#`.

Reload and it appears in the sidebar, in search, and in the previous and next links. Nothing else to register.

Build for production

chronicle build
chronicle start

Or do both in one step while you are trying things out:

chronicle serve

build writes to .output/. start serves what build produced — it does not build for you, so run them in that order. See Build and serve for what the output contains and how presets change it.

Next

• Project structure — what each file and folder is for
• Pages and frontmatter — every field a page can set
• chronicle.yaml — the full config reference