CLI reference

The doctrine binary exposes two commands. It treats the current working directory as the project root, loads doctrine.config.* from there, and resolves a relative content directory from that root.

Shell

doctrine dev [directory] [--host localhost] [--port 5173]
doctrine build [directory] [--site-url https://example.com/docs/] [--out-dir dist]

[directory] defaults to docs and must exist.

`doctrine dev`

Starts a custom Vite server with SSR, client hydration, file watching, and an in-memory development search index.

Argument or option	Default	Meaning
`[directory]`	`docs`	MDX content directory, relative to the project root.
`--host`	`localhost`	Interface passed to Vite.
`--port`	`5173`	Integer port from `0` through `65535`; `0` is dynamic.

Shell

doctrine dev
doctrine dev website --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4173

The command keeps running until the server is stopped. MDX and navigation changes update the site; when page actions are enabled, matching .md source routes update with the authored files. The Pagefind development data is rebuilt lazily after the next search request.

`doctrine build`

Builds the client and SSR bundles, prerenders every navigation route, writes 404.html and the enabled .md source routes, and creates the Pagefind index.

Argument or option	Default	Meaning
`[directory]`	`docs`	MDX content directory, relative to the project root.
`--site-url`	config or `http://localhost/`	Final HTTP(S) URL, including any deployment pathname.
`--out-dir`	config or `dist`	Output path resolved from the root unless already absolute.

Shell

doctrine build
doctrine build website \
  --site-url https://user.github.io/project/ \
  --out-dir build

CLI values override siteUrl and outDir from the root config for that invocation. The output must remain inside the project root, cannot equal the root, and cannot be inside the MDX directory. The client build empties it before writing.

On success, Doctrine prints the number of document routes and the resolved output path. The route count does not include the shared 404 page.

Help and failures

Shell

doctrine --help

The CLI exits non-zero for unknown commands or options, repeated positional directories, missing option values, invalid ports, missing input directories, invalid config/navigation, unsafe output, compilation failures, or search-index failures. Errors are printed as messages without a custom error code contract.