Braised Docs
Braised Docs is a documentation-first static site generator written in Go. It is designed for technical writers, developer advocates, and engineers who write documentation — not necessarily for developers who build SSGs.
What it does
- Converts Markdown files to a clean HTML site with a generated sidebar and in-page table of contents
- Navigation structure is defined explicitly in a central
nav.yaml— decoupled from file names and folder layout - Every build optionally publishes a structured content manifest to one or more RAG pipelines for vector search integration
- Ships as two binaries with no other runtime dependencies:
braisedand the Tailwind v4 standalone CLI
Design principles
Writers first. The authoring surface is Markdown and a simple directive syntax (:::callout). Writers do not need to understand the build pipeline.
Minimal dependencies. No Node.js, no npm, no plugin ecosystem to manage. The braised binary embeds everything it needs.
Never fail fast. Inspired by Sphinx: a broken page does not stop the build. All errors are collected and reported together at the end. One build pass shows you everything that needs fixing.
AI-ready output. Every build produces a manifest.jsonl alongside the HTML site — structured content chunks with breadcrumb context, content hashes, and metadata, ready for embedding and vector search.
Inspiration
Braised Docs draws directly from Hugo and Sphinx — two tools that set the standard in their respective domains. Where our architecture mirrors their approaches (template inheritance, nav compilation, error collection), we follow their patterns deliberately. Novel code is introduced only where Braised's specific goals require it.