README

Documentation that ships with your Laravel app.

Vellum serves a folder of Markdown as a documentation site from the Laravel app you already deploy, with a sidebar, search, light and dark themes, and an optional static export. The docs live in your app's repository and ship with each deploy, so there is no second codebase or host to maintain.

Read the full documentation at vellum.jimmyverburgt.com. Config keys and page frontmatter have been frozen since 0.5, and breaking changes are held for 1.0.

Requirements

PHP 8.4+
Laravel 11, 12, or 13

Quick start

composer require jimmyverburgt/vellum
php artisan vellum:install

Open /docs in your browser and edit the Markdown files in resources/docs/. In production, compile the docs as part of each deploy:

php artisan vellum:build

Packages

Vellum is two Composer packages, released together under one version:

jimmyverburgt/vellum is the docs site: routes, layout, theme, search dialog and static export. This is the one to install.
jimmyverburgt/vellum-core is the engine under it: pages, navigation, versions, access rules, Markdown, the compiled cache, search and the changelog. It comes with the full package, and can be installed on its own when you render the docs yourself. See Core on its own.

Both are developed in this repository. Core is copied to a read-only repository on each release, which is what Packagist installs it from.

What it includes

Markdown with ::: callouts, tabs, steps and cards, and your own <x-…> Blade components
Allowlisted env, config and route tags that print values from the running app
Server-side code highlighting with titles, line numbers and highlighted lines
Client-side search over the sections of every page, or Laravel Scout
llms.txt, raw Markdown and content negotiation for AI tools and agents
Page access control through auth or your existing Laravel gates
Optional versioned docs, with the latest version served without a prefix
A changelog page and Atom feed built from a Keep a Changelog file
Three colour presets tested for WCAG AA contrast, plus a brand accent colour
Static HTML export for hosts that cannot run PHP

Documentation

The documentation site at vellum.jimmyverburgt.com is itself built with Vellum.

Installation and configuration
Writing: Markdown, code blocks, images, navigation
Components and extending with your own
Commands and troubleshooting
Core on its own, for rendering the docs in your own front end
Upgrading

The Markdown source for those pages is in docs/.

Commands

Command	Description
`vellum:install`	Publish config, starter Markdown, and assets
`vellum:build`	Compile Markdown and rebuild the search index
`vellum:index`	Rebuild the search index only
`vellum:clear`	Clear the compiled cache
`vellum:export`	Export a static HTML site

vellum:install and vellum:export come with the full package. The other three are part of core.

Credits

Vellum's layout is modelled on Fumadocs, and its icons come from Phosphor. The full list is in docs/credits.md.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Report security issues as described in SECURITY.md. Release notes are in CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.md.

jimmyverburgt / vellum

Package info

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