The site is Zensical, the successor of Material for MkDocs by the same team,
configured in docs/zensical.toml. docs/AGENTS.md describes the site as a
whole: the two product tabs, the landing page, the derived files, the
redirect stubs, and the deploy. This skill is the mechanics of one page.
To decide whether a change needs a page, and which one, use the
docs-audit skill.
Where a page lives
docs/docs/<product>/<directory>/<slug>.md. The file's path is its URL:
desktop/inbox/flows.md is /desktop/inbox/flows/, and a directory's
index.md is its root (desktop/getting-started/index.md is
/desktop/getting-started/).
The nav has two tabs beside Home (index.md, the landing page), one per
product, each with sidebar groups:
- Desktop (
docs/docs/desktop/): Getting Started (getting-started/index.mdwith the## Installsection,features.md, thenagent-and-repos.md,sign-in.md,notifications.md,first-feed.md), Inbox (inbox/), Code (code/), Chats (chats/), Configuration (configuration/settings.md,keybindings.md), and Resources (getting-started/build-from-source.md,troubleshooting.md). - CLI (
docs/docs/cli/): Getting Started, Configuration, Recipes, andfaq.md.
A page about something the user does in Inbox goes in desktop/inbox/ and
the Inbox group. Build and support pages go in Resources. A setting or key
goes on its Configuration page. A page that describes something both
products share, such as sessions or the task tree, lives with the product
that owns the feature and is linked from the other.
The nav is hand-maintained
docs/zensical.toml holds the nav, and the nav is the site's structure. Its
order is the tab order and the sidebar order, a nested table is a sidebar
group, and a nav entry is a bare path, so the page names itself with its
# Title. Adding a page is two edits: the file and its line in the nav.
A page that is not in the nav still builds and is reachable by URL, and the
strict build does not warn about it. It has no tab or sidebar entry, no line
in llms.txt, and no Markdown twin, so nobody finds it. Check the nav
whenever you add a file.
Frontmatter and body
---
icon: lucide/settings # shown beside the title in the nav
description: Change Hive Desktop preferences in the app or through settings.yaml.
---
# Settings
Open Settings with <kbd>⌘,</kbd> or from the command palette.
## Configuration files
iconis alucide/<name>icon.- The body starts with
# Title, followed by a short task-oriented lede when the title needs context. Do not repeat the frontmatter description. descriptionbecomes the page's line inllms.txt(docs/scripts/llms.pyreads the frontmatter).
docs/docs/desktop/getting-started/index.md and
docs/docs/desktop/inbox/sources.md are useful models.
Writing conventions
- Keep it short. Include what a user needs to complete a task, avoid data loss, meet a requirement, or recover from a failure. Remove implementation detail and explanations of ordinary controls.
- State facts directly. Avoid em and en dashes, rhetorical contrasts such as "not X, but Y", "Why it matters" headings, staged reveals, and marketing filler.
- Do not duplicate an owner page. Link to the page that owns a subject. Sources owns provider support; Settings owns configuration locations; the shortcut dialog owns the complete live shortcut list.
- Summarize visible options. Use a sentence or bullets for groups such as fonts, terminal spacing, notification delivery, and update channels. Do not document every visible setting or explain why someone might change it.
- Use exact configuration only when needed. A short YAML example is useful for manual-only settings and file formats. Do not reproduce a whole schema already available in the app or a shipped skill.
- Callouts are admonitions.
!!! tip "Title"on its own line, body indented four spaces. The pages usetip,note, andinfo;???in place of!!!makes one collapsible (pymdownx.details). Use one for a precondition a user would otherwise discover by failing, and for the Hive workspace pointer on a config page. - Content tabs are
=== "macOS"/=== "Linux"blocks, body indented four spaces (pymdownx.tabbed). The## Installsection ofdesktop/getting-started/index.mdis the example. - Point config pages at the Hive workspace. The app seeds a Chats
workspace named
Hivecarrying every shippedhive-*skill. A page about a file the agent can edit carries a short!!! tip "Ask the Hive workspace"naming that skill (hive-settings,hive-flows,hive-actions, ...). - Name things what the app names them.
Settings ▸ Integrations, the Inbox / Code / Chats areas, workspace, feed. Checkcmd/desktop/frontend/src/components/settings/sectionMeta.tsandcmd/desktop/frontend/src/keybindings/catalog.tsbefore writing a label. - Keys are
<kbd>elements: press<kbd>g</kbd>then<kbd>a</kbd>. - Internal links are relative Markdown-file links, with an anchor when
one is needed:
../configuration/settings.md#updates,sign-in.md, and../../cli/configuration/index.mdfor the other product. The strict build validates them, anddocs/scripts/llms.pyrewrites them to absolute URLs in the Markdown twins. Never link the other product by URL. - Mermaid fences,
attr_list,md_in_html, and emoji shortcodes are enabled indocs/zensical.toml.
Validate
mise run docs:install # first time in a fresh worktree
mise run docs:build # zensical build --clean --strict, then llms.py and redirects.py
mise run docs:serve # browser live reload on http://127.0.0.1:8000
--strict aborts the build on any warning. A link to a page that does not
exist, a link to an anchor that is not a heading on its target, and a nav
entry whose file is missing all report page does not exist with a
file:line:column. Strict does not catch a page absent from the nav (see
above) or a fact that is wrong, so re-read the diff beside the page.
The download buttons and the ## Install panel read the release manifest
from dl.hivedesktop.com; on a local serve they sit in their fallback state.
PR CI runs the same build (the site job in .github/workflows/ci.yml), so
a broken link fails the PR rather than the deploy.
Guardrails
- Never deploy. The site deploys to GitHub Pages from the publish
workflow after a CLI release (
.github/workflows/deploy-site.yml). - A page that moves gets a row in
docs/scripts/redirects.py, so its old URL still lands somewhere. docs/site/is build output;docs/.venv/anddocs/.cache/are local state. All are gitignored. Never edit a file underdocs/site/and never commit any of them.- These pages are product documentation for users. Internal shape belongs in
docs/architecture.md, decisions indocs/decisions/, and in-app copy in the app.