Quickstart

In this guide you will create a docs-and-writing site, preview it locally, add a page, and build the exact folder a static host receives.

1. Install the package
   npmpnpm

    npm install tidypress 

    pnpm add tidypress 

2. Scaffold a publishing root

    npx tidypress init --preset docs-writing --site-url https://docs.example.com 

   TidyPress creates site/, the default publish root. Use a real production URL when you know it; canonical URLs, Open Graph URLs, RSS, and sitemap output depend on it.

3. Start the development server

    npx tidypress dev 

   Open http://localhost:4321. The CLI discovers site/tidypress.config.ts from the repository root.

4. Publish a documentation page

   Create site/src/content/docs/first-build.mdx:

    ---
   title: First build
   description: Verify the complete author-to-artifact path.
   order: 2
   ---
    
   <Steps>
     <Step title="Write">Edit this file in git.</Step>
     <Step title="Build">Run `npx tidypress build`.</Step>
   </Steps> 

   MDX components are registered by the engine; no local import is needed.

5. Build and inspect production output

    npx tidypress build
   npx tidypress preview 

   The default artifact is site/build/ and includes static pages, bundled assets, the Pagefind index, and llms.txt. Search is a production-build feature, so validate it through preview rather than dev.

What was created

The folder containing tidypress.config.ts is the publish root. The src/content/docs/ folder is the docs collection. They are different concepts even when the publish root happens to be named site/.

Choose a different starting shape

default is an alias for lab.

Useful next commands

 npx tidypress doctor
npx tidypress clean
npx tidypress build --output ./dist
npx tidypress build --no-llms-txt 

doctor checks the baseline setup. clean removes the publish-root build and TidyPress cache. --output selects another build directory. --no-llms-txt omits the agent-readable Markdown artifact for that build.

Next steps