nanodoc

Nanodoc

A minimalist document bundler that scales down.

Why nanodoc?

Most documentation tools focus on large, monolithic documents. Nanodoc takes a different approach: it encourages small, focused documentation fragments that live alongside your code. When you need a complete document, nanodoc stitches these fragments together.

Quick Start

Nanodoc is simple - you pass it files, and it bundles them:

# Bundle specific files
$ nanodoc formats/json/about.txt formats/yaml/about.txt

# Extract specific lines
$ nanodoc formats/json/about.txt:L10-30 formats/yaml/about.txt:L4-10,15-30,40

# Add headers and table of contents
$ nanodoc --filenames --toc formats/json/*.txt formats/yaml/*.txt

# Bundle all text files in a directory
$ nanodoc formats/

# Include other file types
$ nanodoc formats/ --ext rst --ext go

# Fine-grained control with patterns
$ nanodoc src/ --ext go --include "**/http/*.go" --exclude "**/*_test.go"

Reusable Bundles

Instead of remembering complex commands, save them as bundles:

# Save your command as a bundle
$ nanodoc src/ --ext go --toc --save-to-bundle api-docs.bundle.txt

# Later, just run the bundle
$ nanodoc api-docs.bundle.txt

A bundle file looks like this:

# API Documentation Bundle
--toc
--linenum file

docs/intro.txt
docs/design.txt:L20-200
src/**/*.go

Key Features

• Line ranges: Extract specific lines with file.txt:L10-20
• Glob patterns: Use **/*.go to match files recursively
• Live includes: Embed files inline with [[file:path]] syntax
• Themes: Built-in themes for different contexts
• Line numbering: Per-file or global line numbers
• Pattern filtering: Include/exclude files with gitignore-style patterns

Installation

brew install nanodoc

Or download a .deb package from the releases.

Learn More

For detailed documentation on any topic:

$ nanodoc help <topic>

Available topics include:

• bundles - Creating and managing bundle files
• content - File selection, patterns, and line ranges
• filenames - Customizing file headers and formatting
• themes - Available themes and styling options
• toc - Generating tables of contents

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! From feedback, to bug reports or actual code, are all very welcomed. Use Github issues

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Nanodoc: Because sometimes you just need to stitch files together, simply.