What is Hanzo Docs

Hanzo Docs is three layers — UI, Core, and a content source — and each one is a library you can use on its own. What ties them together is a set of conventions, not a runtime you have to buy into whole.

Most docs frameworks are a box: you configure it from the outside and you get what it gives you. Hanzo Docs is the opposite. It is a framework you can break.

A configuration file only lets you change what its author thought to expose. When you need something else — a different page shell, different data on the page, different rendering — there is no way in.

Hanzo Docs expects you to write code instead. The pages are your routes, the layouts are your components, and the parts you don't touch are still readable.

Hanzo Docs runs inside your React framework rather than beside it. On Next.js you are still writing App Router code, still getting static generation, still deploying the way you already deploy. Nothing about the docs is a separate system to learn or operate.

Hanzo Docs UI is a theme and nothing more. It has opinions — mostly about mobile and readability — and you will eventually disagree with one of them.

When you do, the Hanzo Docs CLI copies the component into your repo, the way Shadcn UI does. From then on it is your file, and upgrades to the framework leave it alone.

Static site generators render once and go cold. Hanzo Docs is built on React Server Components, so a page can read from a server on request while still shipping almost no JavaScript.

That is what makes a CMS practical: content updates without a rebuild, and the fetch stays on the server where the credentials are.

Hanzo Docs is maintained by Fuma and many contributors, with an eye on keeping the codebase small enough to maintain.

We would rather do the ordinary things well than cover every request. Contributions are welcome.

You do not have to take the whole thing. Each package stands alone:

• @hanzo/docs-core is headless — the docs logic with no UI attached.
• @hanzo/docs-mdx handles MDX content and nothing else.

A React app today is rarely just an app. There is a blog, a showcase page, an FAQ. Hanzo Docs is for the parts of that which are documents, and it saves you writing the same page shell again.

Comparisons covers how it differs from the other options.

Hanzo Docs is built around writing. It ships a theme so you are not designing one, and the tooling around it — search, syntax highlighting, generated API tables — exists so docs stay current while the code moves. This site is built with it.

Most React frameworks can already run a blog.

What Hanzo Docs adds is the surrounding work: syntax highlighting, search, and a theme. You get a blog without building those three again.