Contribute to the MyST documentation

The documentation of MyST is inspired by the Diataxis Documentation Framework.

Suggest an edit to our documentation directly from the browser¶

The easiest way to suggest an edit to any Jupyter Book / MyST site is by using the Edit this page button. If you see something you’d like to change on a page, click this button:

This will take you to the source file for that page on GitHub. Then press the “edit this page” button on GitHub, it looks like this:

Alternatively, you can use the github.dev web-based editor to suggest more comprehensive edits to one or more pages. To do so, in the browser URL replace github.com with github.dev^[1].

How to build the MyST guide documentation locally¶

To build the MyST guide documentation:

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/jupyter-book/mystmd

2. Install MyST Markdown by following these instructions

3. Navigate to the docs folder:

   cd docs/

4. Start a MyST server to preview the documentation:

   myst start

This will build the documentation locally so that you can preview what your changes will look like.

How to update the live website at mystmd.org¶

When you change the content here or in most other MyST repositories, it will not automatically update mystmd.org. This is because we use a custom MyST theme that aggregates content from several MyST repositories into a single website.

The live website mystmd.org is managed by a Curvenote deployment. To update mystmd.org, you must make a deployment to Curvenote.

Currently, the only way to update MyST’s Curvenote deployment is to ask rowanc1 to do it. See this issue about standardizing team access to documentation infrastructure for making this easier for our team to use.

Caution: only update the live deployment if we know the theme still works!¶

If we’ve only changed content in a repository, then it is usually safe to deploy the change to the live site at mystmd.org.

However, **if MyST or one of its themes has been updated, first confirm that the mystmd.org theme has been updated to reflect these new changes.

How does the MyST guide content relate to the documentation at mystmd.org¶

The documentation in this repository serves the content that lives at mystmd.org/guide.

The full content and theme for mystmd.org is hosted at jupyter-book/mystmd.org, which pulls in the content from this folder along with several other documentation sources into one place.

However, the documentation here can be built independently for previewing your changes.

See About the mystmd.org documentation theme and hosting service for more information about the mystmd.org deployment.

About the mystmd.org documentation theme and hosting service¶

The MyST website at mystmd.org is a custom MyST theme designed by the community in order to aggregate documentation from many locations into one website.

Where is the mystmd.org theme located?¶

The jupyter-book/mystmd.org repository has a custom MyST theme that is used to control the content and structure of the site at mystmd.org. It is a Remix website and is deployed on Vercel.

How to access the Vercel configuration for mystmd.org¶

Currently the theme is run on Rowan’s personal Vercel project. If you need to change the configuration reach out to him.

How does the mystmd.org theme work?¶

The custom MyST theme at jupyter-book/mystmd.org is an example of generating a custom application/site using MyST components. It is not how most people build websites with MyST Markdown, but is a good “Advanced Use” example.

The MyST documentation uses a custom theme that inherits from a chain of base themes. Here’s a brief overview of where to look for things:

• The MyST documentation theme is a custom MyST theme defined in the jupyter-book/mystmd.org repository.
• It uses a modified version of the MyST Book theme at jupyter-book/myst-theme: /themes/book/.
• The Book and Article themes are both located in the jupyter-book/myst-theme repository in the /themes directory.
• Each is programmatically published to a repository in the myst-templates GitHub organization for easier and optimized public consumption.
  • Book theme source -> Book theme built version
  • Article theme source -> Article theme built version

The content of mystmd.org is pulled from a number of repositories across the jupyter-book organization.

For example, mystmd.org/guide is pulled from jupyter-book/mystmd: /docs/, and mystmd.org/jtex is pulled from jupyter-book/mystmd: /jtex/docs/. It also includes some custom applications like the Sandbox and MyST demo on the landing page.

How do I deploy changes to the mystmd.org theme?¶

After updating the theme at mystmd.org, we must deploy it to Vercel in order to make it available for use. We use a GitHub Action to deploy to our Vercel project. When that action is run, it will pull the latest docs content from several MyST repositories, and push them to our Vercel deployment.

To trigger that action, you can either:

1. Trigger a workflow dispatch. Go to the Vercel action page. Click on Run Workflow and it will run.
2. Push a commit to main (of jupyter-book/mystmd.org). Any new commit to the main branch will trigger this action.

How do I preview content changes in pull requests?¶

We use the Netlify service to generate deploy previews of the mystmd documentation for all pull requests. These build only the mystmd guide (hosted at https://mystmd.org/guide), not the entire mystmd.org website. They’re just used for convenience and review purposes.

Configuration for our Netlify build exists in the netlify.toml configuration file in the root of the repository.

Any team members can have Developer access to our shared Netlify account, and Steering Council members can have Owner access. If you’d like access, please ask a maintainer.

How to choose what to document in jupyterbook.org vs. mystmd.org?¶

Jupyter Book and the MyST Document Engine have heavily overlapping functionality, so it may be unclear whether something should be documented at mystmd.org or jupyterbook.org. That’s OK and expected - here are some guidelines for where to document things:

• The MyST document engine will be a power user tool. It will be more flexible and modular, with an extensive plugin ecosysytem. It will be agnostic to build output, and single- or multi-page documents.
  • MyST should have the complete reference documentation for the MyST engine, as well as longer explanatory content about the MyST ecosystem.
  • As functionaliy is moved into plugins, we similarly prioritize reference documentation and explanation in those spaces.
  • MyST should be a standalone tool and have enough information for a power user to use on its own.
• Jupyter Book will be a tool for typical users focused around multi-page documents and websites. It will be opinionated, focused around the “book themes”, and be more accessible to a new user or someone unfamiliar with JavaScript workflows.
  • Jupyter Book should focus on How-Tos and Tutorials that are driven by use-cases in multi-page workflows (e.g., documentation, books, community websites, etc).
  • Focus on keeping documentation outcome-oriented, and link heavily to the MyST engine docs for more complete reference information and explanation.

How to create and edit Excalidraw diagrams¶

We use Excalidraw diagrams throughout our documentation. This is a lightweight way to create flow charts and diagrams.

To create a new Excalidraw diagram, first create what you wish in Excalidraw. Then, take the following steps:

1. Click the hamburger menu, then export image.
2. Ensure that embed scene is checked. This will include Excalidraw metadata with the output for future editing.
3. Click the SVG button (or PNG if necessary). This will download a local file with the diagram.
4. Put that in the images/ folder and link it from your content.

To make edits to an Excalidraw diagram, follow these steps:

1. Open excalidraw.com.
2. Find the file that you want to edit.
3. Confirm that it is a SVG or PNG that was created with Excalidraw, and that had embed scene checked upon creation.
4. Drag-and-drop that file into the Excalidraw window. (or, click hamburger menu -> open and add your file that way).
5. Make your edits in Excalidraw.
6. Export the new diagram using the steps described above.
7. Replace the old file with the new one and commit it to git. If using an SVG, you can also just copy/paste the new SVG text and replace the old SVG text with it.

How to enable Pull Request previews on Netlify¶

Netlify Deploy Previews allow others to preview the documentation for a repository as part of the Pull Request workflow. This will add a Documentation Preview to the Status Checks of a pull request. To enable it, do the following:

1. Enable Netlify builds for your repository.
2. Go to the configuration -> notifications section and look for emails and webhooks.
3. Go to Deploy Notifications, which lists the notifications that will post to each PR.
4. To add a new notification, click Add Notification -> GitHub Commit Status.
5. Ensure the following notifications are listed for deploy state commit checks:
   • Add deploy state commit checks when Deploy Preview starts
   • Add deploy state commit checks when Deploy Preview succeeds
   • Add deploy state commit checks when Deploy Preview fails

How to modify and release a MyST theme¶

Below is a brief description for how modifications in a theme are released for public consumption.

1. [dev facing] we make a bunch of changes to the theme, probably changing things in themes/book/*, themes/article/* and packages/*
2. [dev facing] if there were changes in packages/* we release the @myst-theme/* packages (changesets based ci step)
3. [dev facing] we then run make deploy-book and make deploy-article which builds and bundles each theme, making commits to the https://github.com/myst-templates/book-theme and https://github.com/myst-templates/article-theme repos.
4. [user facing] at that point those latest bundle commits will be what is pulled by mystmd clients - people who already have those downloaded need to myst clean --all (as we don’t yet auto bump based on version changes, see #854 for updates).