Markdown · one theme · zero dependencies · MIT

Beautiful documentation, powered by Markdown.

Write a folder of Markdown. Pholio builds the site: static HTML, one theme in light and dark, search that runs in the browser. PHP at build time, nothing at run time.

$ curl -fsSL pholio.lukaloehr.com/install.sh | sh

Read the docs Source ↗

docs/index.md→ /docs

---
title: Pholio
description: Beautiful documentation, powered by Markdown.
icon: book-open
---
 
Pholio turns a folder of Markdown files into a finished
documentation site: static HTML, one stylesheet, a few small
JavaScript modules, the fonts and a search index. No Composer,
no npm, no framework, no build server.
 
There is one theme, and it is polished down to the details:
light and dark schemes, a sidebar with collapsible folders, a
table of contents that follows you, keyboard shortcuts and
instant search. You write Markdown; Pholio takes care of the rest.
 
<Callout type="info" title="Status">
Pholio 0.1.0 builds complete documentation sites.
</Callout>
 
## What you get
 
<Cards>
  <Card title="Markdown in, HTML out" icon="file-text" />
  <Card title="One configuration file" icon="settings" />
</Cards>

The docs on this site, and the Markdown they are built from. Click around.

Dependencies

no Composer, no npm

Runtime

PHP 8.2

at build time only

Themes

light and dark

Interface

EN · DE

English and German

Write

Markdown, plus a few tags.

---
title: Exporting a report
description: How to save a report as a file.
---

Open the report, then choose **Export** in the toolbar.

<Callout type="warn" title="Large reports">
Exports over 10 MB are zipped.
</Callout>

<Steps>
<Step>Pick a format: CSV or PDF.</Step>
<Step>Choose where to save it.</Step>
</Steps>

```bash title="Terminal"
report export --format csv
```

Components as tags
Callouts, cards, tabs, steps, file trees and type tables, written inline.
Highlighted at build time
Code titles, line numbers and code tabs. No highlighter in the browser.
Search in the browser
A prebuilt index, queried in a Web Worker. No backend, no service.
Light and dark
One theme with both schemes, a sidebar, a table of contents and shortcuts.
Fails loud
An unknown component, icon or language stops the build with file and line.
Static output
Plain files for any host, with a ready .htaccess for Apache.

Built with the site.

The index is written at build time and loads on the first hover or focus. Queries run in a Web Worker and rank by title, keywords, headings and text, with prefix, inflection and typo matching. No backend, no service. Try it on these docs:

The same search as in the docs, on the same index.

AI visibility

Readable by agents, too.

Assistants and coding agents read your docs as Markdown, not as HTML they have to scrape. Every Pholio build publishes it, with nothing to maintain by hand.

Every page as Markdown
A clean twin next to each page: getting-started.md.
llms.txt and llms-full.txt
An index of every page, and every page in one file: llms.txt, llms-full.txt.
skill.md and an agent card
A skill that tells agents how to read the docs, listed with its digest, plus an A2A agent card.
Discovery headers
Every response, 404s included, sends Link and X-Llms-Txt pointing at the files above.
Markdown on request
Pages answer Accept: text/markdown and assistants like ChatGPT and Claude with the Markdown twin.
Copy page menu
Next to every page title: copy the page as Markdown, or open it in ChatGPT or Claude.
Agent score 100/100
These docs pass every check of verify/agent-score.mjs, modelled on mint score.

llms.txt/docs/llms.txt ↗

# Pholio
 
> Pholio turns a folder of Markdown into a documentation site: static HTML, one theme in light and dark, search in the browser. Plain PHP 8.2 at build time, zero dependencies, MIT.
 
## Notes for agents
 
Install Pholio with `curl -fsSL https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/install.sh | sh`. Pages below are the Markdown twins of the HTML docs; prefer them.
 
## Pholio
 
- [Pholio](https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/docs/index.md): Beautiful documentation, powered by Markdown. One polished theme, fast search, zero dependencies.
- [Getting started](https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/docs/getting-started.md): Install Pholio, create a project, write a page, build and preview the site.
- [Content format](https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/docs/content-format.md): The Markdown Pholio accepts, the component tags it understands and the meta.json tree files.

Markdown twin/docs/getting-started.md ↗

> Documentation index: https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/docs/llms.txt, a list of every page in this documentation.
 
# Getting started
 
> Install Pholio, create a project, write a page, build and preview the site.
 
## Requirements
 
- PHP 8.2 or newer, command line, with `mbstring` and `ctype`.
- PCRE2 10.43 or newer is recommended for full syntax highlighting. It is bundled
  with PHP (`php -r 'echo PCRE_VERSION;'`). On an older PCRE2 the build still
  succeeds; the few grammar patterns that need lookbehinds of variable length are
  switched off, and Pholio warns once per affected grammar that some syntax

Same URL, Markdown for agents

$ curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/docs/getting-started

Try it

Five commands.

The installer downloads the release from GitHub, checks it against SHA256SUMS, checks PHP and PCRE2, and links pholio into ~/.local/bin. Requires PHP 8.2+ with mbstring and ctype. Or download v0.1.0 directly.

Terminal

$ curl -fsSL https://pholio.lukaloehr.com/install.sh | shcurl -fsSL pholio.lukaloehr.com/install.sh | sh
$ pholio init my-docs
$ cd my-docs
$ pholio dev     # http://127.0.0.1:8080
$ pholio build   # static site in public/