ts-docs-gen

ts-docs-gen is a command-line documentation generator for TypeScript projects. It walks your project with the TypeScript compiler API (via ts-morph) and turns your exported functions, classes, interfaces, enums, type aliases, and variables — plus their JSDoc comments — into Markdown that's ready to drop into a static docs site.

Features

• Generates Markdown documentation from your TypeScript source, one file per module by default, mirroring your input directory structure, plus an index.md/README.md table of contents linking to all of them.
• Understands JSDoc: @param, @returns/@return, @example, and @deprecated are parsed out individually instead of being dumped as a single blob.
• Documents classes (with extends/implements, properties, and methods — private members are skipped by default), interfaces, enums, type aliases, and variables.
• Follows re-exports (export * from './x', export { a as b } from './y') and lists them so barrel files aren't silently undocumented.
• Only documents exported declarations by default, so implementation details don't leak into your public docs (opt in to everything with --include-non-exported).
• Adds YAML frontmatter (a title) to each generated file, so the output can be dropped straight into Docusaurus, MkDocs, or any other frontmatter-aware static site generator.
• Ships as both a CLI and a small programmatic API (generateDocsForProject), and as a reusable GitHub Action for other repos' CI.

Getting Started

Installation

npm install --save-dev @kuttim/ts-docs-gen

or globally:

npm install -g @kuttim/ts-docs-gen

Usage

From the root of your TypeScript project (where your tsconfig.json lives):

ts-docs-gen

By default this reads TypeScript files from ./src, generates one Markdown file per source file plus an index, and writes them to ./docs.

CLI options

CLI flags always take priority over a ts-docs-gen.json config file.

Flag	Description	Default
-i, --input <path>	Input directory to scan	./src
-o, --output <path>	Output directory for generated docs	./docs
-c, --config <path>	Path to a config file	./ts-docs-gen.json
-e, --exclude <patterns>	Comma-separated glob pattern(s) to exclude (repeatable)	**/*.spec.ts
--include-non-exported	Also document non-exported declarations and private class members	false
--no-frontmatter	Disable YAML frontmatter in generated files	frontmatter on
--single-file	Write one documentation.md instead of one file per source file	false
-V, --version	Print the installed version
-h, --help	Print usage

Run ts-docs-gen init to scaffold a ts-docs-gen.json with the defaults above.

Configuration

ts-docs-gen.json example:

{
  "input": "./src",
  "output": "./docs",
  "exclude": ["**/*.spec.ts"],
  "includeNonExported": false,
  "frontmatter": true,
  "singleFile": false
}

All fields are optional and fall back to the defaults shown above.

GitHub Action

Other repositories can generate their docs in CI using this project as a composite action:

- uses: kuttim/ts-docs-gen@master
  with:
    input: ./src
    output: ./docs
    exclude: '**/*.spec.ts'

See action.yml for the full list of inputs.

Programmatic API

import { Project } from "ts-morph";
import { generateDocsForProject } from "@kuttim/ts-docs-gen/dist/generators/documentGenerator";

const project = new Project({ tsConfigFilePath: "./tsconfig.json" });
const files = generateDocsForProject(project, { excludePatterns: ["**/*.spec.ts"] });
// files: { outputPath: string; content: string }[]

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. See the License file for more details.