@bysages/docs-theme

A Nuxt Content layer that turns any Nuxt site into an Elements documentation site — the paper-and-ink shell, the sidebar / article / outline grid, the AI assistant, and the raw-markdown surfaces agents expect. The interactive parts are the library itself (NavigationMenu, Toc, Button, the Ai family); the layer adds only the site chrome around them.

Features

• 🖋 Paper-and-ink docs shell — sticky header with a menubar, sidebar, article grid with the "On this page" outline, footer, landing and 404 pages, all overridable by file convention
• 🤖 AI-native surfaces — llms.txt / llms-full.txt, a raw-markdown twin for every page, an MCP server at /mcp, and .well-known discovery documents
• 💬 Assistant included — a floating input and drawer panel wired to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with tool-call and reasoning parts styled like the rest of the system
• 🌐 i18n-ready — one content collection and one UI-string pack per locale; works single-language without @nuxtjs/i18n registered
• 📐 SEO that ships — canonical links, per-locale sitemaps, robots, og images and schema.org driven by the deployed origin (the platform's URL variable, docus-style)

Installation

The package is a Nuxt layer; extend it from your site's nuxt.config.ts:

# pnpm
pnpm add @bysages/docs-theme

# npm
npm install @bysages/docs-theme

# yarn
yarn add @bysages/docs-theme

# bun
bun add @bysages/docs-theme

Quick Start

1. Extend the layer:

   // nuxt.config.ts
   export default defineNuxtConfig({
     extends: ["@bysages/docs-theme"],
   });

2. Brand the site in app/app.config.ts:

   export default defineAppConfig({
     docs: {
       name: "Elements",
       description: "What this site is, in one sentence.",
       copyright: { label: "By Sages", url: "https://www.bysages.com/" },
     },
   });

3. Write markdown under content/ (or content/docs/, which the layer serves under /docs). A site that defines its own app/pages/index.vue keeps it; otherwise the layer renders a landing page from content/index.md.

Set the deployed origin through NUXT_SITE_URL (or your platform's variable — CF_PAGES_URL, VERCEL_URL, …) so canonical links, the sitemap and llms.txt point at the real host.

Deploying to Cloudflare Pages

The layer detects the platform (CF_PAGES) and prepares the build for it. Three things to provide on the Cloudflare side:

1. A D1 database bound to the project under the name DB — the content database rides on it at runtime (Workers have no node:sqlite).
2. nodejs_compat in the project's compatibility flags, with a compatibility date of 2024-09-23 or later. Without it the build polyfills the Node builtins with stubs that drop async context across awaits — anything reading the request through useEvent() (the MCP endpoint's tools, session state) then fails with Nitro request context is not available. The repo's wrangler.jsonc declares the same flags for the build and local preview; when the project config carries pages_build_output_dir, wrangler pages deploy applies them to production too.
3. Nothing else. Every prerendered page is served straight from the asset store; the worker only handles runtime routes (search, the assistant, the MCP endpoint, sitemaps, og images). For local preview, npx wrangler pages dev dist with a wrangler.jsonc that declares the same DB binding — Wrangler provisions a temporary local database for it.

AI assistant

The layer ships a floating assistant panel wired to POST /api/assistant. Point it at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint:

BS_DOCS_BASE_URL=https://api.example.com/v1
BS_DOCS_API_KEY=…
BS_DOCS_MODEL=…        # optional, "default" when unset

Without credentials the endpoint answers 503 and the panel shows its quiet failure copy. Remove the route if the site does not want an assistant.

Customizing and overriding

Nuxt layers resolve overrides by file name: drop a component with the same path into your site's app/components/ and yours wins. Three things to know:

• Declared site dependencies. pnpm's strict resolution does not flow a layer's dependencies into your site — declare what your overrides import. Overriding the assistant panel requires @ai-sdk/vue and ai as site dependencies; overriding AppSearch.vue requires minisearch.
• Theme utilities come by auto-import. highlightFence (code highlighting) and pagesFrom are exported from the layer's utils/ and available in every component without an import line — never import them by relative path, which resolves against the overriding site and breaks.
• Server routes. Overriding server/api/assistant.post.ts is a supported customization: replace it wholesale with your own handler, but keep the BS_DOCS_* environment contract so deployments stay portable.

i18n messages

The theme ships UI strings (docs.*, common.*) in i18n/locales/{en,zh}.json. A site that registers @nuxtjs/i18n keeps full ownership of its locale files — the theme injects its strings only for the languages your locales declare, and your keys win over theme keys with the same name. Without @nuxtjs/i18n the theme serves one locale from app.config.docs.locale.

Markdown (remark-mdc) conventions

The content pipeline speaks remark-mdc; three rules keep components in markdown honest:

• Indent component children by two spaces — an unindented #title inside ::page-card binds to the outer section, and a leaked closing ::: renders as literal text.
• Put a space before an inline <Icon /> at line start — flush-left, the markup swallows the following text.
• Write component props inline in braces: ::page-section{orientation="horizontal" reverse}.

Acknowledgments

The documentation shell began as a study of Docus — many of its ideas (the docs grid, the raw-markdown twins, the assistant) are re-implemented here in our own UI. Thank you to the Nuxt Content team and community.

The live consumer in this repository is docs/.

License

• MIT © By Sages