Get started

documate generates documentation from your code — an overview, one page per module, and an API reference from your docstrings — and then fails CI when those docs stop matching the code. One command writes the docs; the same tool gates them.

Install

uv tool install documate     # or: pipx install documate  /  pip install documate

Everything runs on the standard library. The optional --ai mode is the only extra: it shells out to the claude CLI, so that needs to be on your PATH too.

First run

cd your-repo
documate --init    # write a config, index the code, generate docs/
documate           # regenerate or refresh docs/, then gate them

--init drops a small documate.config.json you can leave untouched. From then on, bare documate is the whole job: it re-indexes, writes docs/README.md (an overview with a dependency map, coverage, and hotspots), docs/ARCHITECTURE.md (the system on one page), and one page per module under docs/architecture/, then checks them.

The commands

documate — index, write or refresh docs/, then gate it.
documate --check — gate only, writes nothing; this is what CI and the pre-commit hook run.
documate --watch — regenerate on every save while you work.
documate --html — also render this static site into site/.
documate --ai [MODEL] — draft missing docstrings with a model, then re-verify.
documate --stats — show coverage, documentation lines, and any model spend.

Point it anywhere with documate path/to/repo, and see the full list with documate --help.

Keep the docs honest

documate --check exits non-zero when a generated page is stale, when a hand-written page points at code that no longer exists, or when a hand-written page describes code that changed but was not updated. Nothing to remember day to day — install the hook once and it regenerates and stages the pages on every commit:

git config core.hooksPath hooks

In CI, run documate --check with fetch-depth: 0 on the checkout step, so the history the overview's hotspots and evidence are mined from is fully available.