Documentation

Top 23 Documentation Open-Source Projects

Documentation
  1. the-art-of-command-line

    Master the command line, in one page

    Project mention: 🚀 20 Must-Know GitHub Repositories for Developers in 2025! | dev.to | 2025-03-08

    1️⃣7️⃣ The Art of Command Line 🖥️ 📌 https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line Master the Linux command line with this detailed guide.

  2. SurveyJS

    JavaScript Form Builder with No-Code UI & Built-In JSON Schema Editor. Add the SurveyJS white-label form builder to your JavaScript app (React/Angular/Vue3). Build complex JSON forms without coding. Fully customizable, works with any backend, perfect for data-heavy apps. Learn more.

    SurveyJS logo
  3. storybook

    Storybook is the industry standard workshop for building, documenting, and testing UI components in isolation

    Project mention: Monorepo Tutorial With Lerna, Storybook & Next.js | dev.to | 2025-04-03

    In this tutorial, you'll learn how to build a monorepo using Lerna. We’ll be building a Next.js application which will import components from a separate package. We’ll also be using Storybook to showcase those components.

  4. mermaid

    Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text in a similar manner as markdown

    Project mention: Show HN: Mermaid Chart VS Code Plugin: Mermaid.js Diagrams in Visual Studio Code | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-02

    It's worth pointing out that mermaidchart.com is NOT the official Mermaid project (https://mermaid.js.org/).

    They're a for-profit company using the Mermaid name.

    This creates a lot of confusion whenever the name comes up, which I suspect is deliberate.

  5. Docusaurus

    Easy to maintain open source documentation websites.

    Project mention: Organização de Projetos no Github | dev.to | 2025-05-14
  6. tldr

    📚 Collaborative cheatsheets for console commands

    Project mention: AI Coding and the Peanut Butter and Jelly Problem | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-12

    Before LLMs there existed quite a few tools to try to help with understanding CLI options; off the top of my head there are https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr and explainshell.com

    LLMs are both more general and more useful than those tools. They're more flexible and composable, and can replace those tools with a small wrapper script. Part of the reason why the LLMs can do that though is because it has those other tools as datasets to train off of.

  7. professional-programming

    A collection of learning resources for curious software engineers

    Project mention: System Design Resources that are Not ByteByteGo | dev.to | 2024-06-03

    Professional Programming by Charles-Axel Dein

  8. cheat.sh

    the only cheat sheet you need

    Project mention: Cheat.sh/:Firstpage | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-08
  9. Civic Auth

    Auth in Less Than 5 Minutes. Civic Auth comes with multiple SSO options, optional embedded wallets, and user management — all implemented with just a few lines of code. Start building today.

    Civic Auth logo
  10. devdocs

    API Documentation Browser

    Project mention: 10 more Exciting Resources for Devs | dev.to | 2025-04-07

    ID: i26 Tags: Programming, API, Documentation Description: Fast, offline, and free documentation browser for developers. GitHub Link | Website Link

  11. wtfpython

    What the f*ck Python? 😱

    Project mention: Ask HN: Is there any programming language that doesn't have WTFs? | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-21

    After reading this page:

    https://github.com/satwikkansal/wtfpython?tab=readme-ov-file#-needles-in-a-haystack-

    I wonder if there's any language that thought about all edge cases and avoided exceptions and such gotchas at the design level.

    JS is notorious for such WTFs but even Python—which I've used for over a decade now—has surprised me countless times.

    Is Haskell also like that? How about Lisps (CL, Racket, Clojure, Scheme, etc.)?

  12. docsify

    🃏 A magical documentation site generator.

    Project mention: 🚀 Fast Static Site Deployment on AWS with Pulumi YAML | dev.to | 2025-04-05

    I built a fast, responsive, and lightweight static documentation site powered by Docsify, hosted on AWS S3 with a CloudFront CDN for global distribution. The entire infrastructure is managed using Pulumi YAML, allowing me to declaratively define and deploy resources without writing any imperative code.

  13. gitbook

    The open source frontend for GitBook doc sites

    Project mention: How to Migrate Technical Documentation: Tools, Checklist, and Tips | dev.to | 2025-05-13

    GitBook is a documentation platform that provides a sleek, collaborative interface for technical teams and product documentation. It’s known for its clean UI, WYSIWYG editing, and support for markdown. GitBook supports team collaboration, access control, and integrates with tools like GitHub and Slack. It’s great for teams looking for a balance between ease of use and professionalism.

  14. Wiki.js

    Wiki.js | A modern and powerful wiki app built on Node.js

    Project mention: Show HN: We built a FOSS documentation CMS with a pretty GUI | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-05
  15. mkdocs-material

    Documentation that simply works

    Project mention: Observables & Chill: Getting Started with RxJS | dev.to | 2025-02-11

    MkDocs-Material

  16. MkDocs

    Project documentation with Markdown.

    Project mention: How to Migrate Technical Documentation: Tools, Checklist, and Tips | dev.to | 2025-05-13

    MkDocs is a static site generator designed specifically for project documentation and written in Python. It’s easy to set up, uses markdown for content, and features a number of themes, including the popular Material for MkDocs. MkDocs integrates well with Python-based workflows and CI/CD tools. It’s a great choice for Python developers and teams looking for simplicity and readability.

  17. TOAST UI Editor

    🍞📝 Markdown WYSIWYG Editor. GFM Standard + Chart & UML Extensible.

    Project mention: Show HN: Unforget, the note-taking app I always wanted: offline first, encrypted | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-06-11

    What problems did you encounter with something like https://ui.toast.com/tui-editor? Which is much more featureful than simplemde.

  18. BookStack

    A platform to create documentation/wiki content built with PHP & Laravel

    Project mention: Self-hosting with Podman | dev.to | 2025-04-15

    Additionally at some point people behind this product decided to change the licensing model, and allow the use of community editions for up to 5 nodes. It wasn't my case, but that pushed me to use something more independent. So I started using dockge, then added another service for docker logs, version monitor, and keeps adding applications that are fun to use, for example homebox or bookstack. It was fun until I released the cost of energy and maintenance effort need to keep it running, at my home. Every internet issue, or power issue takes my setup down. Maybe it was not happening very often, but when I wasn’t home, and the hardware was down, there was no chance to fix it remotely. And I started relaying on that service. That is why I simply decided to migrate to hetzner, and podman at the same time, and use remote NFS. However, let's start from the beginning.

  19. JSDoc

    An API documentation generator for JavaScript.

    Project mention: Documenting Web Components With Storybook | dev.to | 2025-02-19

    One of the best tools available in Web Component development is the Custom Elements Manifest. It's a JSON representation of all your available components, covering all the attributes, methods, slots and events they support, powered by your JSDoc comments and TypeScript types. You can customize the manifest generation through plugins to support custom JSDoc comments, allowing you to power more pieces of your documentation through code comments; for example, you could set up a comment format to indicate if your component is experimental or stable or provide a way to add a link to your Figma files.

  20. docmost

    Docmost is an open-source collaborative wiki and documentation software. It is an open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion.

    Project mention: File structure in Docmost, an open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion | dev.to | 2025-04-24

    I found this in App.tsx L54 — L68.

  21. editor.md

    The open source embeddable online markdown editor (component).

  22. Gollum

    A simple, Git-powered wiki with a local frontend and support for many kinds of markup and content.

    Project mention: WordPress Is in Trouble | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-01-13

    Depends on your target user. If you want something really simple for developers, https://github.com/gollum/gollum is pretty neat (is what powers the Wiki system on GitHub), while if you want something simple for people who aren't developers, something like Mediawiki would fit better. Although Mediawiki requires a database, you can use SQLite (which is basically a file on disk as a DB) for it.

    Dokuwiki is also a neat old-school alternative that basically treats files on disk as articles/pages, so no (other) DB needed.

  23. architecture_decision_record

    Architecture decision record (ADR) examples for software planning, IT leadership, and template documentation

    Project mention: 50 years of the Mythical Man Month: insights that still shape the software industry | dev.to | 2025-02-12

    And with that Brooks describes something quite similar to what we now know as Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).

  24. cheat

    cheat allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. It was designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember.

  25. zeal

    Offline documentation browser inspired by Dash

    Project mention: Man pages are great, man readers are the problem | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-04-09
  26. InfluxDB

    InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

    InfluxDB logo
NOTE: The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars. The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or since we started tracking (Dec 2020).

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  • A note from our sponsor - Civic Auth
    www.civic.com | 14 May 2025
    Civic Auth comes with multiple SSO options, optional embedded wallets, and user management — all implemented with just a few lines of code. Start building today. Learn more →

Index

What are some of the best open-source Documentation projects? This list will help you:

# Project Stars
1 the-art-of-command-line 155,912
2 storybook 86,563
3 mermaid 79,145
4 Docusaurus 59,763
5 tldr 55,154
6 professional-programming 47,598
7 cheat.sh 39,353
8 devdocs 36,245
9 wtfpython 36,219
10 docsify 29,248
11 gitbook 27,881
12 Wiki.js 26,242
13 mkdocs-material 23,226
14 MkDocs 20,396
15 TOAST UI Editor 17,476
16 BookStack 16,586
17 JSDoc 15,218
18 docmost 15,192
19 editor.md 14,097
20 Gollum 13,992
21 architecture_decision_record 13,291
22 cheat 12,766
23 zeal 12,125

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