A self-hostable docs platform: connect a GitHub repo (or just upload a docs.zip), and Huell builds and publishes a clean, searchable docs site for it — on your own server, under your own domain, with no vendor lock-in.
Huell is one deployable instance per organization. There's no shared multi-tenant service — you run it, you own the data, you own the infrastructure.
Why
Popular hosted docs platforms are great for authoring, but self-hosting at their enterprise tier often means a Kubernetes-scale deployment (MongoDB + PostgreSQL + Redis + object storage, 45–60 vCPUs) — built for running dozens of large public docs sites off one shared, multi-tenant install. Huell targets the far more common case: one org's docs, built and served without a vendor contract or that much infrastructure, whether that's a two-person team or a large company that doesn't need a multi-tenant docs cluster. The whole stack runs comfortably on a single small VM, and scales by giving it a bigger VM — not by adding new services.
Features
- Invite-only org, Google sign-in — the first person to sign in becomes org admin
- Projects connect to a GitHub repo (auto-rebuild on push) or accept a
docs.zipupload — no GitHub required at all if you'd rather not connect one - Per-project roles (owner/editor/viewer), independent of org-admin status
- One-click GitHub App creation from the dashboard (a manifest flow — no manual App setup)
- Docs sites built with Astro Starlight: grouped/tabbed sidebar nav, search, dark mode by default, LaTeX math, and a familiar set of callout and content components (
Note,Tip,Warning,Card,Steps,Tabs,ParamField,ResponseField, ...) - Each project gets its own subdomain (
<slug>.docs.<your-domain>) with automatic HTTPS huellup— a companion CLI that scaffolds, validates, and locally previews adocs/folder, plus an MCP server so an AI coding agent can write valid docs against the real schema
How it works
Four pieces, one Docker Compose file: a Caddy reverse proxy, the Next.js dashboard, a build worker that runs the Astro build for whichever project changed, and static output served straight off disk. No Kubernetes, no message broker, no object storage — SQLite for metadata, the filesystem for build output. See Architecture for the full request-flow breakdown.
Getting started
Requirements: a Linux server, Docker + the Docker Compose plugin, a domain with DNS you control.
git clone https://github.com/Arshdeep54/huell.git && cd huell
./setup.sh
Full walkthrough, including DNS and first sign-in, is in the Installation guide.
Docs
Full documentation, kept up to date, lives at huell-docs.hiesenbug.dev — itself a Huell-built site:
- Installation
- Configuration — every environment variable, what it's for
- Migrating existing docs — bringing in a
docs.json+.mdxfolder with no restructuring - CLI and MCP server —
huellup, and wiring an AI agent up to write docs for you - Tunnel deployment — for a server with no public IP
Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md for local development setup and the codebase layout.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.