tangly

Self-hosted, open-source documentation framework. Drop-in compatible with Mintlify projects.

Tangly renders existing docs.json + MDX corpora unmodified — point it at a Mintlify-shaped project and it just works. Built on Astro 6, no proprietary backend, no vendor lock-in.

Quick start

# One-line installer (Linux/macOS): writes a `tangly` wrapper to ~/.local/bin
curl -fsSL https://tangly.dev/install.sh | bash

# Or invoke ad hoc — no install needed
bunx tangly init   # bun
npx tangly init    # node

# Or add to your project as a dep
bun add tangly
npm install tangly

# Common commands
tangly init                # scaffold a new project
tangly migrate             # migrate from Mintlify (mint.json → docs.json)
tangly dev                 # local dev server
tangly build               # static build → ./dist

Install

Curl installer (Linux / macOS)

curl -fsSL https://tangly.dev/install.sh | bash

Detects bun (preferred) or npm/npx, pins to the latest tangly, writes a wrapper to ~/.local/bin/tangly that delegates to bunx tangly@<version> (or npx) on every invocation. First run per version downloads ~80MB of deps; subsequent runs hit the cache.

Override defaults:

# Pin a specific version
curl -fsSL https://tangly.dev/install.sh | bash -s -- --version 0.0.5

# Force npm instead of bun
TANGLY_PM=npm curl -fsSL https://tangly.dev/install.sh | bash

# Different bin directory
TANGLY_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin curl -fsSL https://tangly.dev/install.sh | bash

PowerShell installer (Windows)

iwr -useb https://tangly.dev/install.ps1 | iex

Same model as the bash installer; wrapper goes to $env:LOCALAPPDATA\tangly\bin\tangly.cmd.

bunx / npx (zero install)

bunx tangly init           # always uses latest
bunx [email protected] init     # pinned
npx tangly init            # node equivalent

Project dependency

bun add tangly             # or: npm install tangly
bunx tangly init           # or: npx tangly init

For the bleeding-edge build off main:

bun add tangly@dev

Why no standalone binary? Tangly drives Astro at build time, and Astro's plugin ecosystem (vite, tailwind oxide native bindings, mdx, shiki) requires real on-disk node_modules. A single executable can't ship a working plugin tree, so the installer wraps bunx/npx instead.

What you get

• Mintlify compatibility — every docs.json field, all 14+ MDX components (Card, Tabs, Steps, Accordion, ParamField, etc.), OpenAPI rendering.
• Theming — drop-in themes via @tanglydocs/theme-* packages. Default tang (Mintlify-Mint inspired); alternatives pith, pip, readable, geist.
• No SaaS — your docs build to static HTML, deploy anywhere (Vercel, Cloudflare, GitHub Pages, S3, your own box).
• CLI: init, dev, build, migrate, add, eject, preview, check.

Documentation

• Source: github.com/tanglydocs/tangly
• Issues: github.com/tanglydocs/tangly/issues

License

MIT