Welcome to Great Docs

Great Docs is a comprehensive documentation site generator for Python packages. It creates beautiful, professional documentation sites with auto-generated API references, smart navigation, and modern styling. Best of all, it requires minimal configuration.

Why Great Docs?

Creating documentation for Python packages often involves:

  • Writing configuration files by hand
  • Manually listing every class, function, and method
  • Keeping documentation in sync as your API evolves
  • Wrestling with styling and navigation

Great Docs eliminates these pain points by:

  • Auto-discovering your API: Automatically finds and documents your public classes, functions, and methods
  • Intelligent organization: Groups related items together and handles large classes gracefully
  • Zero configuration: Works out of the box with sensible defaults
  • Modern styling: Professional appearance with responsive design for all devices

Key Features

One-Command Setup

A single great-docs init creates your entire documentation site, including:

  • Auto-generated index.qmd from your README.md
  • Complete API reference configuration
  • Navigation and sidebar setup
  • Styling and post-processing scripts

Auto-Generated API Documentation

Great Docs automatically discovers and documents your package’s public API:

  • Classes with their methods and attributes
  • Functions with parameters and return types
  • Smart categorization and organization
  • Source code links to GitHub

CLI Documentation

If your package has a Click-based command-line interface, Great Docs can automatically generate reference pages showing the --help output for each command.

User Guide Support

Create narrative documentation alongside your API reference. Just add .qmd files to a user_guide/ directory and Great Docs handles the rest.

What You’ll Learn

This User Guide covers everything you need to know:

  1. Installation – Getting Great Docs set up
  2. Quick Start – Creating your first documentation site
  3. Configuration – Customizing behavior via great-docs.yml
  4. API Documentation – How auto-discovery works and how to customize it
  5. CLI Documentation – Documenting Click-based CLIs
  6. User Guides – Writing narrative documentation
  7. Deployment – Publishing to GitHub Pages

Let’s get started!