Introduction

What Tartarus is, what it deliberately is not, and when to use it.

On this page

Tartarus is a documentation framework for Hugo . It ships a complete documentation site — layout, navigation, search, theming and a Markdown component set — that you point at a content/docs directory.

Principles

Four rules decide every trade-off in this codebase.

text

Build time  >  Runtime
Static      >  Dynamic
Native      >  Dependency
Simple      >  Complex

In practice that means Hugo renders the world and Alpine handles the interaction. Navigation, the table of contents, breadcrumbs, previous/next links, syntax highlighting and metadata are all computed during the build. The browser receives finished HTML.

What is in the box

A three-pane documentation layout with sticky rails.
Sidebar navigation generated from your content tree, with collapsible groups.
Table of contents with scroll spy.
Static full-text search powered by Pagefind .
Light, dark and system themes with no flash on load.
Build-time syntax highlighting via Hugo's Chroma, with copy buttons.
Callouts, tabs, breadcrumbs, prev/next and "Edit this page" links.
SEO metadata, a sitemap and an RSS feed.

What is deliberately absent

No React, Vue or Svelte. No client-side router. No hosted search service. No database. No analytics you did not add yourself.

Note

JavaScript is an enhancement here, not a requirement. With scripts blocked you lose search, tabs and the mobile drawer — the documentation itself still reads perfectly.

When not to use it

If your documentation needs authenticated content, server-rendered personalisation or live data, a static site is the wrong tool. Tartarus assumes every page can be rendered ahead of time and served from a CDN.

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