Generate and Publish Command Reference Docs
Generate and Publish Command Reference Docs
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Claude Code
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Claude Opus 4.6
StartedFeb 16, 6:04 PM
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Feb 16, 6:04 PM
Messages449
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Let me read the key files I need to reference directly.
73 files total. Some of those are pre-existing files (like bisect.md, ci-cd.md, notes.md, README.md etc. from an existing docs/ directory). Let me check what was already there.
>git ls-files docs/Ah, the docs/ directory already has some pre-existing files. The generated files would mix in with them. Some overlap too - docs/resolve.md and docs/schema.md are pre-existing and the generator creates git-pkgs_resolve.md and git-pkgs_schema.md, but also docs/vulns.md already exists.
I should change the output directory to avoid mixing generated and hand-written docs. Let me use a different directory name, like docs/reference/ or maybe I should just point the generator at a temp dir.
Actually, looking more carefully, the generated files all have the git-pkgs_ prefix (because Cobra names them after the command path).
The pre-existing files don't have that prefix, so I could filter when copying to the website - just grab the git-pkgs_*.md files. But this approach feels fragile. I think it's cleaner to just write the generated docs to docs/reference/ instead, keeping them separate from the hand-written content.
The CLI repo already has a docs/ directory with hand-written files. I should write to a separate directory to avoid mixing. Let me fix the script.
Now update the workflow to match.
Now let me clean up the previously generated files in docs/ and regenerate into the right place.
>git checkout -- docs/ && rm -f docs/git-pkgs*.md && go run scripts/generate-docs.go>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/git-pkgs/docs/reference/ | wc -l && ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/git-pkgs/docs/reference/ | head -1064 files, exactly as expected. Let me verify the frontmatter and content of a couple files.
Frontmatter and links look correct. Now copy the generated files to the website and test the Hugo build.
>cp /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/git-pkgs/docs/reference/*.md /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/ | wc -l65 files (64 generated + _index.md). Now test the Hugo build.
>cd /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website && hugo --minify 2>&1The build succeeds but I notice it didn't produce the llms output. Let me check if hextra actually supports it. Let me also check if the build output mentions llms.txt.
Wait, actually Hugo might not report it separately in the output. Let me check if the file was actually created.
Build is clean. Let me check if llms.txt was generated and verify the reference pages are in the output.
>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/llms.txt 2>&1>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/docs/reference/ | head -10>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/docs/reference/ | wc -lAll there. Let me verify the llms.txt content and that inter-command links work.
>grep -l "reference" /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/llms.txt 2>/dev/null; grep "reference" /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/llms.txt | head -5Reference pages are in llms.txt. Let me check that the inter-command links resolve correctly in the built HTML.
>grep -o 'href="[^"]*reference[^"]*"' /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/docs/reference/git-pkgs_vulns/index.html | head -10Lines are too long to see the actual links. Let me extract them more precisely.
>grep -oP 'href="/docs/reference/git-pkgs[^"]*"' /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/docs/reference/git-pkgs_vulns/index.html | head -15>grep -oE 'href="[^"]*git-pkgs_vulns[^"]*"' /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/docs/reference/git-pkgs_vulns/index.html | head -15>grep -oE 'href="[^"]*"' /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/public/docs/reference/git-pkgs_vulns/index.html | grep -i pkgs | head -20Links are resolving correctly. The vulns page links to https://git-pkgs.dev/docs/reference/git-pkgs_vulns_blame/ and all its subcommands, and back up to the root git-pkgs page. Everything works.
Now let me clean up the generated files from the CLI repo (since they shouldn't be committed there) and the website's public directory.
>rm -rf /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/git-pkgs/docs/reference && rm -rf /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/publicAlso remove the copied reference docs from the website's content dir (those will come from the workflow in practice).
>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/git-pkgs*.md | wc -l>rm /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/git-pkgs*.mdLet me also make sure the CLI repo's docs/reference/ dir gets gitignored so generated output doesn't accidentally get committed there.
Let me start the hugo server. First I need to regenerate the reference docs so there's content to browse.
>cd /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/git-pkgs && go run scripts/generate-docs.go && cp docs/reference/*.md /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/>cd /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website && hugo server<retrieval_status>not_ready</retrieval_status>
<task_id>b5a6e42</task_id>
<task_type>local_bash</task_type>
<status>running</status>
<output>
Watching for changes in /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/assets/{css,js,json}, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/data, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/i18n, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/layouts/{_markup,_partials,_shortcodes,blog,docs}, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/package.json, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/static/{casts,images}, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/static
Watching for config changes in /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/hugo.yaml, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/hugo.toml, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/go.mod
Start building sites …
hugo v0.154.5+extended+withdeploy darwin/arm64 BuildDate=2026-01-11T20:53:23Z VendorInfo=Homebrew
│ EN
──────────────────┼─────
Pages │ 106
Paginator pages │ 0
Non-page files │ 0
Static files │ 14
Processed images │ 0
Aliases │ 0
Cleaned │ 0
Built in 475 ms
Environment: "development"
Serving pages from disk
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Press Ctrl+C to stop
</output>Hugo server is running at http://localhost:1313/. The reference section should be at http://localhost:1313/docs/reference/.
Here's a summary of everything that was done:
CLI repo (git-pkgs/git-pkgs):
scripts/generate-docs.go -- mirrors generate-man.go, uses doc.GenMarkdownTreeCustom() with Hugo frontmatter and ref shortcode linksgo run scripts/generate-docs.go to .goreleaser.yaml before hooksdocs/reference/ to .gitignoreWebsite repo (git-pkgs/website):
.github/workflows/generate-docs.yml -- weekly + manual, clones CLI at latest tag, generates docs, opens PR via peter-evans/create-pull-requestcontent/docs/reference/_index.md -- section landing page with weight 90content/docs/_index.mdoutputs.home with llms format to hugo.yamlVerified:
hugo --minify builds clean (106 pages)/llms.txt includes all reference pagesThe user wants the reference section landing page to list all the commands. Currently it just has a short description. Let me update the _index.md to list the commands. I could do this with a Hugo template that automatically lists child pages, which would be better than hardcoding since the workflow regenerates the content.
Hextra (the theme) should support listing child pages. Let me check what shortcodes or layouts are available. Actually, the simplest approach would be to use Hugo's built-in page listing or hextra's cards/section shortcode.
Let me check what hextra offers for section pages.
The user has two issues:
Let me address both.
For issue 2: The "SEE ALSO" section is generated by Cobra's markdown doc generator. Every subcommand links back to its parent, and the root command links to all children. The root git-pkgs page linking to children is fine, but every child page showing "SEE ALSO" with a link back to the root is redundant since the sidebar already provides navigation.
Actually, looking at the Cobra source again - the SEE ALSO section includes:
For leaf commands like git-pkgs add, SEE ALSO just shows the parent git-pkgs. For commands with subcommands like git-pkgs vulns, it shows both the parent and all children.
The user says every page shows the root link which is noisy. I could suppress the SEE ALSO section entirely, or I could modify the generator to not include it. Looking at the Cobra doc generator code, I can see where it's building the SEE ALSO section and I could customize that behavior to exclude parent links on child pages.
The sidebar already provides navigation and the ref links handle cross-references, so the SEE ALSO section feels redundant. The simplest fix would be to write a custom generator instead of using Cobra's built-in one, though that's more work than just tweaking the existing approach. I'm realizing the SEE ALSO section actually has value for parent commands that list their children, but the parent link back is redundant since the sidebar handles navigation. The cleanest solution is to write a custom markdown generator that skips SEE ALSO entirely and just includes frontmatter, synopsis, usage, examples, and options. For the landing page listing, I could use a Hugo shortcode to iterate through child pages instead of manually listing them. the sidebar navigation handles that. I'll create a shortcode for the listing page that groups child pages by their parent command, then modify the generator to skip the SEE ALSO section entirely and let Hugo's navigation take care of cross-references.
Two things to fix: remove the redundant SEE ALSO sections (sidebar handles navigation), and add a command listing to the landing page. Let me handle both.
I'll replace the Cobra GenMarkdownTreeCustom call with a custom writer that skips the SEE ALSO section entirely (the sidebar handles navigation). I'll also create a shortcode for the landing page listing.
Implement the following plan:
The command reference on the website is manually maintained and covers about 18 topics, but the CLI has 64 commands. Many commands have no docs at all. The manual docs contain good narrative content (tutorials, CI examples, use cases) that shouldn't be replaced, so generated reference docs go in a separate section.
git-pkgs/git-pkgs)New file: scripts/generate-docs.go
Mirrors the existing scripts/generate-man.go. Imports cmd.NewRootCmd(), calls doc.GenMarkdownTreeCustom() to write one markdown file per command into a docs/ directory. The filePrepender callback injects Hugo frontmatter (title, weight) at the top of each file. The linkHandler callback rewrites Cobra's git-pkgs_vulns_blame.md links into relative Hugo paths. Sets DisableAutoGenTag = true on the root command to suppress the auto-generated timestamp footer (it creates noisy diffs on every run).
Add to .goreleaser.yaml hooks (alongside the man page generator):
- go run scripts/generate-docs.gogit-pkgs/website)New file: .github/workflows/generate-docs.yml
Runs on a schedule (weekly) and on workflow_dispatch for manual runs. Steps:
git-pkgs/git-pkgs at latest taggo run scripts/generate-docs.go inside the cloned CLIdocs/ output into content/docs/reference/peter-evans/create-pull-requestNew file: content/docs/reference/_index.md
Section landing page with title "Command Reference" and a high weight (90) so it sorts near the bottom of the sidebar, after the narrative guides.
Edit: content/docs/_index.md
Add a card linking to the new reference section:
{{< card link="reference" title="Command Reference" subtitle="Every command and flag" >}}Edit: hugo.yaml
Enable the llms.txt output format that hextra already supports:
outputs: home: - html - rss - llmsgo run scripts/generate-docs.go and inspect the docs/ output -- should produce ~64 markdown files with Hugo frontmattercontent/docs/reference/hugo server and check the sidebar shows the reference section with all commands/llms.txt is served and includes the reference pageshugo --minify to confirm a clean buildIf you need specific details from before exiting plan mode (like exact code snippets, error messages, or content you generated), read the full transcript at: /Users/andrew/.claude/projects/-Users-andrew-code-git-pkgs-website/e2798a3a-05ca-4e41-8eda-e9df79186723.jsonl
Now create the shortcode for listing commands on the landing page.
>ls /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/layouts/>mkdir -p /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/layouts/shortcodesWait, the description won't be set from the generated pages. Let me check what we have in the frontmatter -- we only have title and weight. The short description is in the body. Let me pull it from the page summary or content instead. Actually, let me look at what Cobra gives us in the body.
The old generated files are still there. Let me regenerate and copy.
>rm -rf docs/reference && go run scripts/generate-docs.goNo SEE ALSO. Now I need the short description available for the listing. The first line after frontmatter is the short description. Hugo's .Summary will pick that up, but it might include more. Let me add a description field to the frontmatter instead.
Also clean up the unused name variable.
Good, that diagnostic is gone. Now update the shortcode to use .Description.
That looks right. Now regenerate, copy, and see the result.
>rm -rf docs/reference && go run scripts/generate-docs.goNow copy to website and update the landing page.
>rm -f /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/git-pkgs*.md && cp /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/git-pkgs/docs/reference/*.md /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs/reference/Hugo server should have live-reloaded. Let me check for any build errors.
<retrieval_status>not_ready</retrieval_status>
<task_id>b5a6e42</task_id>
<task_type>local_bash</task_type>
<status>running</status>
<output>
Watching for changes in /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/assets/{css,js,json}, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/data, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/i18n, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/layouts/{_markup,_partials,_shortcodes,blog,docs}, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/package.json, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/static/{casts,images}, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/content/docs, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/static
Watching for config changes in /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/hugo.yaml, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/_vendor/github.com/imfing/hextra/hugo.toml, /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website/go.mod
Start building sites …
hugo v0.154.5+extended+withdeploy darwin/arm64 BuildDate=2026-01-11T20:53:23Z VendorInfo=Homebrew
│ EN
──────────────────┼─────
Pages │ 106
Paginator pages │ 0
Non-page files │ 0
Static files │ 14
Processed images │ 0
Aliases │ 0
Cleaned │ 0
Built in 475 ms
Environment: "development"
Serving pages from disk
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Press Ctrl+C to stop
Change detected, rebuilding site (#1).
2026-02-16 11:33:47.099 +0000
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Rebuilt in 461 ms
Change detected, rebuilding site (#2).
2026-02-16 11:33:47.598 +0000
Source changed /docs/reference/_index.md
Source changed /docs/reference/_index.md.tmp.60593.1771241627173
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Total in 266 ms
</output>Rebuilt cleanly. The reference page at http://localhost:1313/docs/reference/ should now show the command list, and individual pages no longer have the SEE ALSO section. Have a look.
excellent, open a git-pkgs to add the generate script
The user wants me to open a PR on the git-pkgs/git-pkgs repo to add the generate-docs.go script and the .goreleaser.yaml change and .gitignore change. Let me check the current state of changes in that repo.
>git status>git diff>git log --oneline -5I'm on the purl-package-args branch. I need to create a new branch from main for this work.
>git stash && git checkout main && git pull && git checkout -b generate-docs && git stash pop>git add scripts/generate-docs.go .goreleaser.yaml .gitignore && git commit -m "$(cat <<'EOF'
Add Hugo doc generator for website command reference
Mirrors generate-man.go but outputs markdown with Hugo frontmatter
into docs/reference/. Runs as a goreleaser before-hook alongside
the man page generator.
EOF
)">git push -u origin generate-docs>gh pr create --repo git-pkgs/git-pkgs --title "Add Hugo doc generator for website command reference" --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
Mirrors generate-man.go but outputs markdown with Hugo frontmatter into docs/reference/. Each command gets a page with synopsis, usage, examples, and flags. Runs as a goreleaser before-hook alongside the man page generator.
The website repo has a workflow that clones this repo at the latest tag, runs the generator, and opens a PR with the output.
EOF
)">gh pr edit 120 --repo git-pkgs/git-pkgs --base mainIt's already targeting main. Did you mean fetch/pull main in this website repo, or something else?
git-pkgs/git-pkgs main might have some commits you didn't pull and that new pr needs rebasing
>git fetch origin main && git rebase origin/main && git push --force-with-leaseAlready up to date -- the branch was created from the latest main after the fast-forward pull. PR #120 is clean.
ok and now open a pr on website
>cd /Users/andrew/code/git-pkgs/website && git status>git diff>git log --oneline -5>git checkout -b command-reference && git add .github/workflows/generate-docs.yml content/docs/reference/_index.md content/docs/_index.md hugo.yaml layouts/shortcodes/command-list.html && git commit -m "$(cat <<'EOF'
Add command reference section and docs generation workflow
Adds a weekly workflow that clones the CLI repo, runs the doc
generator, and opens a PR with the output. Includes a reference
section landing page, a command-list shortcode, and llms.txt output.
EOF
)">git push -u origin command-reference>gh pr create --repo git-pkgs/website --title "Add command reference section and docs generation workflow" --body "$(cat <<'EOF'
Adds a weekly workflow that clones the CLI at its latest tag, runs the doc generator, and opens a PR with the output into content/docs/reference/. The generated pages don't ship in this PR since they depend on git-pkgs/git-pkgs#120 being merged and released first.
Also adds a command-list shortcode for the reference landing page and enables llms.txt output.
EOF
)"- go run scripts/generate-docs.go{{< card link="reference" title="Command Reference" subtitle="Every command and flag" >}}outputs: home: - html - rss - llms