readthedocs.org

This is the source code for Read the Docs, the free documentation hosting service that many open-source software projects use to publish their documentation online. If you have ever clicked a link to docs.something.io or readthedocs.io while looking up how to use a Python library or other open-source tool, you have likely used a site hosted by Read the Docs.

The service works by connecting to a Git repository, watching it for changes, and automatically building and publishing the documentation every time someone pushes new code. You point it at your repository, and it handles the build and hosting steps. It supports the two most common documentation systems in the Python world: Sphinx, which uses a format called reStructuredText, and MkDocs, which uses standard Markdown.

The quickstart described in the README is short: create an account by signing in with GitHub, grant access, add your project by searching for the repository name, and you are done. After that, every commit you push triggers an automatic documentation rebuild without any further manual steps. The README describes this approach as continuous documentation, treating docs the same way continuous integration treats code.

This repository is not a library you install and use in your own project. It is the actual application that runs the readthedocs.org platform. Developers who want to contribute to the platform itself or run a self-hosted version would work with this code. The project is licensed under MIT.