Docs generators, knowledge bases, and developer reference tools
Showing 24 of 44 tools
Open-source TypeScript headless CMS and app framework
Payload is an open-source TypeScript-first headless CMS and app framework with 32K+ GitHub stars. Built on Next.js with PostgreSQL or MongoDB, it provides auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, a customizable admin panel, access control, localization, versioning, and file uploads. Config-as-code defines collections in TypeScript for full type safety. Features live preview, draft system, block-based editor, and extensible plugins. Self-hostable with no vendor lock-in.
MIT-licensed API documentation framework by Zuplo
Zudoku is an MIT-licensed API documentation framework built by the team behind Zuplo API gateway. It generates developer portals from OpenAPI specs with features like interactive API playground, markdown content pages, authentication integration, and search. Designed as a free alternative to ReadMe and Stoplight with customizable themes and plugin architecture.
Modern API documentation platform and OpenAPI reference generator
Scalar is an API documentation platform that generates beautiful, interactive API references from OpenAPI specifications. Selected as the default API docs renderer in .NET 9, it replaces Swagger UI with a modern interface featuring dark mode, request examples in multiple languages, and a built-in API client. Available as open-source packages for any framework or as a hosted platform.
Self-hosted collaborative wiki and documentation platform
Docmost is an open-source collaborative wiki offering real-time editing, spaces with granular permissions, page history, and rich diagram support via Draw.io, Excalidraw, and Mermaid. Designed as a self-hosted Confluence and Notion alternative for teams needing data sovereignty, it provides nested pages, comments, and full-text search. Over 19,700 GitHub stars and 52 releases demonstrate strong community adoption.
Open standard for guiding AI coding agents at the repository level
AGENTS.md is an open standard format adopted by 60,000+ open-source projects for providing AI coding agents with repository-level instructions. With 20,000+ GitHub stars, it has been adopted by GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex, Google Gemini CLI, and multiple IDEs as the de facto way to communicate project context and coding conventions to AI agents.
State-of-the-art OCR toolkit supporting 100+ languages from Baidu
PaddleOCR is an open-source OCR toolkit from Baidu's PaddlePaddle ecosystem with over 73,000 GitHub stars. It provides ultra-lightweight and high-accuracy text detection and recognition for 100+ languages including CJK, Arabic, and Indic scripts. The toolkit offers pre-trained models, easy deployment via pip, and server/edge inference options for document digitization workflows.
Extensibility-first open-source no-code/low-code platform for business apps
NocoBase is an open-source, self-hosted no-code and low-code platform built around a data-model-driven architecture and plugin-based microkernel. Unlike form-centric no-code tools, it separates data structure from UI, enabling unlimited block types and views per data collection. All functionality is delivered through plugins similar to WordPress. Features include AI Employees for in-app automation, visual workflow builder, RBAC permissions, and automatic REST/GraphQL API generation.
Auto-generates interactive ER diagrams from database schemas
Liam ERD automatically generates beautiful, interactive entity-relationship diagrams from existing database schemas. It supports Rails schema.rb, PostgreSQL, Prisma, and raw SQL — with zero configuration required. A web version handles public repos instantly, while the CLI processes private repositories with CI/CD integration for keeping documentation in sync.
Instant MCP server for any GitHub repository
GitMCP is a free, open-source remote MCP server that transforms any GitHub repository or GitHub Pages site into an AI-accessible documentation hub. Just replace github.com with gitmcp.io in any repo URL to give AI assistants grounded context about that project — eliminating code hallucinations with zero configuration required.
AI documentation tool with video-to-docs conversion
Trupeer is an AI documentation platform that converts screen recordings and videos into structured technical documentation with AI-generated voiceovers. It automates the creation of step-by-step guides, API documentation, and SaaS help articles by analyzing video content and generating written docs with annotated screenshots. Useful for teams creating onboarding materials and product documentation.
Auto-generate API docs from live production traffic
Levo.ai generates OpenAPI specifications and API documentation automatically from live production traffic using eBPF-based instrumentation. It captures real request/response patterns to create always-accurate API docs that eliminate documentation drift. Features include automated API discovery, security testing of documented endpoints, and Postman collection generation without requiring code changes.
Generate SDKs and API documentation from OpenAPI specs
Fern is a platform that generates idiomatic client SDKs and beautiful API documentation from OpenAPI specifications. It produces type-safe SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, and C# with features like pagination, retries, and streaming built in. The documentation includes API reference, guides, and an AI-powered search assistant. Used by companies like Cohere, ElevenLabs, and Merge.
Instant AI API documentation from code snippets
DevDocsAI is a fast-utility AI documentation generator where developers paste code snippets and receive structured API documentation in 30 seconds. It targets individual makers and small teams who need quick documentation for specific code segments without the overhead of setting up a full documentation platform, providing rapid turnaround for function and endpoint documentation.
AI-powered marketing-ready READMEs from code
PitchDocs is an AI documentation generator that scans codebases to produce marketing-ready READMEs, changelogs, and AI context files like llms.txt. It bridges the gap between raw source code and consumer-ready technical communication, targeting the growing need for high-quality README files that serve both human developers and AI agents accessing documentation.
AI localization engine for software and docs
Lingo.dev is a Y Combinator F24-backed AI localization engine that automates translation of software interfaces and technical documentation into multiple languages while maintaining technical context. It preserves code variables, formatting tokens, and technical terminology that generic translation tools mangle, solving the global reach problem for developer-facing products and documentation.
IDE documentation that stays synced with code
Swimm uses AI to keep code documentation in sync with real-time code changes, providing interactive walkthroughs directly in VS Code and JetBrains IDEs. It solves the stale documentation problem by making docs part of the development workflow rather than a separate artifact, automatically detecting when code changes invalidate existing documentation and suggesting updates.
Developer-focused documentation with AI assistance
Archbee is a developer-focused documentation platform with AI assistance for writing technical guides, API documentation, and internal knowledge bases. Built specifically for engineering teams rather than general content writers, it provides specialized code blocks, team collaboration spaces, API reference generators, and version-controlled documentation alongside AI-powered writing suggestions.
AI documentation generator from code repositories
DocuWriter.ai creates technical documentation from code repositories by scanning files, understanding patterns, and generating structured documentation including API references, function descriptions, and architectural overviews. It supports batch processing for entire repositories, serving as a zero-to-one documentation tool for undocumented codebases that need initial documentation coverage quickly.
Auto-generate SDKs and docs from backend routes
Speakeasy uses AI to parse backend API routes and auto-generate production-ready SDKs in multiple languages alongside OpenAPI documentation. It ensures that client libraries and documentation always match the current backend implementation, eliminating the drift between API code, SDK behavior, and documentation that plagues most API-first teams as their services evolve.
AI-powered Stripe-style API documentation
Theneo is a Y Combinator-backed tool that generates high-quality, Stripe-style API documentation in seconds using AI. It transforms OpenAPI specs, Postman collections, or raw code into interactive developer portals with code playgrounds, multi-language SDK examples, and beautiful visual design, helping API-first teams create professional documentation without spending weeks on manual writing.
AI documentation for legacy codebases
Kodesage is an AI platform designed for navigating and documenting legacy systems, consolidating knowledge from code, issue tickets, and wikis to generate function-level documentation. It creates AST-based code maps that help teams understand complex 20-year-old codebases in plain English, with on-premises and air-gapped deployment options for high-security enterprise environments.
ETL for LLMs — preprocess any document format
Unstructured is an open-source ETL library that preprocesses and transforms documents from diverse formats into clean, structured data ready for LLM ingestion and RAG pipelines. It handles PDF, HTML, Word, PowerPoint, and many other file types through partitioning, cleaning, and chunking operations. The library offers connector-based architecture for integrating with various data sources and destinations, making it a key component in document processing workflows for AI applications.
Get your documents ready for gen AI
Docling is an open-source document processing toolkit by IBM Research that converts complex documents into structured formats optimized for generative AI applications. It parses PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, HTML, images, audio, and LaTeX with advanced PDF understanding including layout analysis, reading order detection, and table structure recognition. Docling exports to Markdown, HTML, JSON, and DocTags, and integrates natively with LangChain, LlamaIndex, and other AI frameworks for RAG workflows.
Convert any file to Markdown for LLM pipelines
MarkItDown is a lightweight Python utility by Microsoft that converts files into clean Markdown optimized for LLM pipelines and text analysis. It supports PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, images with OCR, audio with transcription, and text formats like CSV, JSON, and XML. The tool preserves document structure including headings, tables, lists, and links while keeping output token-efficient. It offers a CLI, a four-line Python API, Docker support, and a plugin architecture for extensions.