If you're going to depend on Dokly for your docs, you should know how it works. Here's the model in one page.
The mental model#
Every Dokly project is three things:
- A subdomain (e.g.,
acme.dokly.co) and optionally a custom domain (e.g.,docs.acme.com). - A tree of pages — each page has a slug, a title, and MDX content. Pages can be nested.
- Branding settings — logo, primary color, social card, dark/light defaults.
The dashboard at dokly.co/dashboard is where you write and configure. The public site at your subdomain is where readers go.
What that means for you#
- No deploys. Editing is publishing. There's no preview branch, no PR review, no CI queue.
- No local environment. Everything happens in your browser. (You can still version-control MDX externally if you want — see Migration.)
- Fast pages, always. The reader hits a CDN-cached static page, not a database query.
- Search is client-side. Search runs in the browser using Fuse.js — instant results, no API calls.
The components are real React#
Dokly's MDX components (Callout, Tabs, Steps, Card, APIPlayground, etc.) are React components rendered by Next.js. That means:
- They're styled, accessible, and dark-mode aware out of the box.
- The same components render in the editor preview and on the live site, so what you see is what readers get.
- You can't add arbitrary React components from outside the platform — you're limited to the built-in set. This is intentional: it keeps your docs portable and prevents your build from breaking.
The full list of available components is in Components → Overview.
Data and ownership#
- Your content lives in our managed Postgres service.
- You can export every page as MDX from Settings at any time. There's no lock-in.
- Free-tier projects sit on the same infrastructure as Pro projects — no degraded performance.