A documentation engine with no build step. Point it at a directory of markdown files and start serving — pages are rendered when requested, not ahead of time. One file changed? Only that page is re-rendered. Your site can have 10 pages or 10,000; startup time is the same.
Publish the same markdown to Confluence pages or embed in Backstage with native plugins.
- CommonMark — standard markdown via pulldown-cmark
- Live reload — edit markdown, see changes instantly in the browser
- Diagram rendering — PlantUML, Mermaid, GraphViz, and 14+ formats via Kroki
- Tabbed content — group related content with
::::tabs/:::tabsyntax - Status badges — inline colored pill labels with Confluence status-macro parity
- GitHub-style alerts —
[!NOTE],[!TIP],[!WARNING], and more - Navigation and TOC — automatic sidebar, breadcrumbs, and table of contents
- Page metadata — YAML frontmatter or sidecar files for titles, descriptions, and navigation order
- Confluence rendering — produce publish-ready bundles (XHTML + diagrams) for any Confluence publishing tool
- Backstage integration — embed docs with native Backstage plugins
# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install rwdocs/tap/rw
# macOS / Linux (shell)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/rwdocs/rw/releases/latest/download/rw-installer.sh | sh
# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/rwdocs/rw/releases/latest/download/rw-installer.ps1 | iex"Then serve your docs:
rw serveRW looks for markdown files in docs/ by default. If docs/ has no index.md, the project root README.md is used as the homepage.
Open http://localhost:7979 to see your site.
If you installed via the shell or PowerShell script, upgrade in place with:
rw updateUse rw update --check to see whether a newer release is available without
installing it. Homebrew users upgrade with brew upgrade rw instead.
RW uses rw.toml for configuration, automatically discovered in the current directory or any parent directory.
[docs]
source_dir = "docs"
[diagrams]
kroki_url = "https://kroki.io"See the configuration guide for all options.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
rw serve | Start documentation server with live reload |
rw backstage publish | Publish documentation bundles to S3 for Backstage |
rw confluence render | Render markdown into a Confluence-publishable bundle (XHTML + diagrams) |
rw comment | Read and write inline comments on project docs (for scripts and LLM agents) |
rw update | Update rw to the latest release (self-update) |
Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT License, at your option.