#Engine

The materialization layer that transforms ciderpress.config.ts into a Rspress-compatible documentation site.

#Overview

The engine reads a declarative config, discovers markdown files via globs, resolves the information architecture (sidebar, nav, landing pages), and writes everything into .ciderpress/content/. Rspress only consumes the engine's output in .ciderpress/content/.

#Key Concepts

• Config-driven -- The config defines the entire information architecture. No separate sidebar or nav config files.
• Glob-driven discovery -- Patterns auto-discover files without manual entry per page.
• Virtual pages -- Landing pages and home pages are generated as MDX at sync time.
• Multi-sidebar -- Root entries share /, isolated sections use distinct namespaces (e.g., /apps/api/).
• Incremental -- Mtime checks, content hashes, and config hashes skip unchanged work between syncs.

#Build vs Dev

Build (ciderpress build) runs a single sync pass:

loadConfig() --> sync() --> createRspressConfig() --> rspress build() --> .ciderpress/dist/

Dev (ciderpress dev) runs sync then enters a watch loop:

loadConfig() --> sync() --> createRspressConfig() --> rspress dev() --> watcher

After initial sync, the watcher monitors the repo and triggers incremental resyncs. See Dev Mode for how the watch loop works.

#Topics

#References

• Architecture
• Config
• CLI Reference