pdoc3/pdoc

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1182 stars · 145 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

pdoc3 is a Python tool that auto-generates API documentation from a project's modules, classes, functions, and their docstrings with zero configuration. It supports common docstring formats (Markdown, numpydoc, Google-style), type annotations, cross-linking, customizable Mako templates, and includes a built-in development web server for live preview.

Use cases

• generate api docs for my python package from docstrings
• lightweight sphinx alternative for python documentation
• auto-generate html documentation from python source code
• preview python docstrings in a local web server
• document python project with markdown docstrings
• create api reference docs with zero configuration

When to choose

• you have a small-to-medium Python project and want docs with minimal setup
• you prefer Markdown or Google/numpydoc docstring styles over reST
• you want automatic cross-linking and docstring inheritance out of the box
• you need customizable HTML templates via Mako

When to avoid

• you need Sphinx's full ecosystem of extensions, themes, and multi-format output
• your project is large and requires fine-grained documentation control
• you cannot accept the AGPL-3.0 license
• you need documentation for non-Python code

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

documentation api-documentation cli templating documentation developer-tools python cli cross-platform docstring-parsing api-docs markdown sphinx-alternative mako-templates python

Member repositories

For agents

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