Introducing Explainer v2

We’re excited to announce Explainer v2 — a complete rewrite of our documentation boilerplate, now built as a monorepo powered by Astro, React, Tailwind CSS 4, and pnpm. It ships three independent apps — docs, blog, and website — that share common packages for MDX rendering, UI components, and configuration.

Whether you’re documenting a single library or an entire ecosystem of projects, Explainer v2 gives you everything you need out of the box.

Why Explainer?

The problem

Documentation tooling is fragmented. You need one tool for docs, another for your blog, another for your landing page — each with its own configuration, build pipeline, and deployment story. Keeping them consistent is a maintenance burden.

Explainer solves this by giving you a single, ready-to-use monorepo where docs, blog, and website live side by side. Shared packages ensure consistent styling and MDX components across all three apps, while each app remains independently deployable.

Key Features

Explainer v2 comes packed with features designed for real-world documentation needs:

Multi-Project Docs

Host documentation for multiple projects in a single instance. Each project gets its own sidebar, versioning, and navigation — accessible via a dropdown switcher.

Versioning

Ship docs for multiple versions of your project. Use default for unversioned docs, or add named versions like v1, v2 — readers switch between them seamlessly.

Internationalization

Full i18n support with URL prefix routing (/fr/..., /en/...), automatic browser language detection, and per-locale navigation.

Full-Text Search

Built-in search powered by Pagefind. Your docs are indexed at build time — no external service required, fully static and blazing fast.

OG Thumbnails

Automatically generate Open Graph images for every documentation page, giving your content rich previews when shared on social media.

Rich MDX Components

Explainer v2 ships with a library of custom MDX components that are auto-imported into every content file — no import statements needed. Here’s a taste:

This callout was written with a single directive — no imports, no boilerplate. Explainer’s MDX pipeline handles everything for you.

Callouts

Info, success, warning, danger, and note variants for highlighting important content.

Cards & Card Groups

Visual cards with icons and links, arranged in responsive grid layouts.

Code Blocks

Syntax highlighting, line numbers, line highlighting, code groups with tabs, and more.

You also get Tabs, Steps, Code Groups, and Preview components — all documented in the components reference.

Three Apps, One Monorepo

App	Purpose	Port	Package
Docs	Technical documentation with sidebar navigation, versioning, and search	`4321`	`@explainer/docs`
Blog	Content-driven blog with tags, authors, and RSS	`4322`	`@explainer/blog`
Website	Marketing landing page	`4323`	`@explainer/website`

All three apps share common packages for MDX processing, UI components, and Tailwind configuration. Learn more about the project structure.

Getting Started

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/explainer/explainer-v2
cd explainer-v2

Install dependencies

Explainer uses pnpm workspaces. Install everything with a single command:

pnpm install

Start developing

Launch all three apps in development mode:

pnpm dev

Or start a single app:

pnpm dev --filter @explainer/docs

For the full setup guide, including prerequisites and configuration, head to the Getting Started page.

Deploy Anywhere

Explainer v2 apps are standard Astro projects — deploy them wherever you like:

Docker

Containerize each app independently with the included Dockerfiles and docker-compose setup.

Vercel

Zero-config deployment with automatic builds and preview environments.

Cloudflare Pages

Deploy to Cloudflare’s edge network for global performance.

GitHub Pages

Free hosting with GitHub Actions for automated builds on every push.

What’s Next

Explainer v2 is ready for you to use today. We’re actively working on expanding the feature set — but the foundation is solid and production-ready.

Explore the docs

Head over to the documentation to get started, or browse the feature pages to see everything Explainer v2 has to offer.

If you find Explainer useful, give us a star on GitHub and share it with your team. We’d love to hear what you build with it!