Svelte DocSmith

The documentation framework for Svelte 5 library authors whose interactive examples need to live inside one real, stateful SvelteKit app, not sandboxed as isolated islands.

Write a markdown file under src/routes/docs/ and you get a styled page with syntax highlighting, heading anchors, a sidebar derived from your content, and a live table of contents. No per-page wiring, no content collection to configure.

Status: pre-1.0. Published to npm and usable today. The public API is still stabilising, so minor releases may include breaking changes until v1.0.

Install

The fastest way to start a new docs site is the scaffolder, which wires up everything below for you:

npm create svelte-docsmith@latest my-docs

To add DocSmith to an existing SvelteKit app, install the package instead:

npm install svelte-docsmith

Peer dependencies: Svelte 5, SvelteKit 2, and Tailwind v4, set up the standard way in your app.

Setup

Three small pieces, once.

1. The markdown pipeline. In svelte.config.js, one call bundles mdsvex, Shiki highlighting (dual light/dark themes, a generous language set, plain-text fallback for unknown languages), heading anchors, and the packaged page layout:

// svelte.config.js
import adapter from '@sveltejs/adapter-auto';
import { vitePreprocess } from '@sveltejs/vite-plugin-svelte';
import { docsmith } from 'svelte-docsmith/preprocess';

export default {
	extensions: ['.svelte', '.md'],
	preprocess: [vitePreprocess(), docsmith()],
	kit: { adapter: adapter() }
};

2. The Vite plugin. In vite.config.ts, it scans your doc pages' frontmatter into the svelte-docsmith/content module (so the sidebar is derived from content, never hand-written), builds the search index, and powers LiveExample:

// vite.config.ts
import { sveltekit } from '@sveltejs/kit/vite';
import tailwindcss from '@tailwindcss/vite';
import { docsmith } from 'svelte-docsmith/vite';
import { defineConfig } from 'vite';

export default defineConfig({
	plugins: [docsmith(), tailwindcss(), sveltekit()]
});

By default it scans src/routes/docs; pass docsmith({ content: 'src/routes/guide' }) to point elsewhere.

3. The stylesheet. In your root app.css, once Tailwind v4 is set up the standard way (tailwindcss + the @tailwindcss/vite plugin, stylesheet imported in the root layout), the whole style contract is one import:

@import 'tailwindcss';
@import 'svelte-docsmith/theme.css';

theme.css makes Tailwind scan the package, defines the shadcn theme tokens (--background, --primary, --radius, …) for :root and .dark, and pulls in the typography and animation plugins. Override any token by redefining it after the import, or import a preset (see Themes).

The shell

Add DocsShell once, in src/routes/docs/+layout.svelte. It composes the header, sidebar, content area, and table of contents. docs is the generated content index, so there is no content collection to import and no alias to configure:

<script lang="ts">
	import { DocsShell, defineConfig } from 'svelte-docsmith';
	import { docs } from 'svelte-docsmith/content';

	const config = defineConfig({
		title: 'My Library',
		github: 'https://github.com/you/my-library'
	});
	const { children } = $props();
</script>

<DocsShell {config} content={docs}>
	{@render children()}
</DocsShell>

Doc pages

Each page is a +page.md under src/routes/docs/. Frontmatter drives the sidebar and the <h1>; the body is markdown, starting at ##:

---
title: Getting Started
description: Install and configure the library.
section: Guides
order: 1
---

## Installation

```bash
npm install my-library
```

title names the page. section groups pages in the sidebar; order sorts within a group (and orders the groups by their smallest order). Add the file and it appears in the sidebar, styled, highlighted, with a table of contents.

Live examples

LiveExample renders a real, interactive component next to its own syntax-highlighted source: one file, imported twice, so the demo and its code can never drift. The ?source import is served by the same docsmith() Vite plugin you already added:

<script>
	import { LiveExample } from 'svelte-docsmith';
	import Counter from '$lib/examples/counter.svelte';
	import counterSource from '$lib/examples/counter.svelte?source';
</script>

<LiveExample source={counterSource}>
	<Counter />
</LiveExample>

Batteries included

• Search. A ⌘K / Ctrl-K command palette over a build-time full-text index, no service to host. Pass a search loader to DocsShell: search={() => import('svelte-docsmith/search').then((m) => m.docs)}.
• SEO. DocsShell writes <title>, meta description, canonical, and Open Graph / Twitter tags for every page from its frontmatter, no per-page wiring.
• Error pages. ErrorPage gives a styled 404 that keeps the site chrome; drop it into a SvelteKit +error.svelte.
• Components. Callout, Tabs, Steps, Card, Accordion, Badge, Kbd, FileTree, PropsTable, and more, authored right inside markdown.
• Heading anchors, a scroll-spy table of contents, and one-click copy on every code block, wired up for you.

Themes

Eleven presets ship in the box. Darkmatter is the default, applied by theme.css; import any other preset after it to switch:

@import 'svelte-docsmith/theme.css';
@import 'svelte-docsmith/themes/amethyst.css';

Available: darkmatter, tangerine, amethyst, graphite, evergreen, rose, ocean, nord, claude, bubblegum, mono. Or skip the preset and override the tokens yourself.

What's exported

Entry point	What it is
svelte-docsmith	All components (DocsShell, ErrorPage, LiveExample, Callout, Tabs, …), plus defineConfig, createSearchEngine, and the types
svelte-docsmith/preprocess	docsmith(), the mdsvex/Shiki pipeline (Node, config time)
svelte-docsmith/vite	docsmith(), the content index, search index, and ?source transform (Node, build)
svelte-docsmith/content	docs, the generated sidebar content index
svelte-docsmith/search	docs, the generated full-text search index (lazy-load it)
svelte-docsmith/theme.css	the base style contract
svelte-docsmith/themes/*.css	the eleven theme presets

The vendored shadcn primitives and internal helpers (the TOC engine, clipboard utility, markdown renderer map) are not part of the public API; they can change between releases. Get buttons, cards, and the like from shadcn-svelte directly.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.