Methodology

Leadtype is a docs pipeline, not a docs website framework. It produces the artifacts a docs site needs (markdown, llms.txt, search index, navigation) and stays out of routing, layout, and theming.

The short version

Tool	What it gives you
Fumadocs	A React docs framework (Next.js, TanStack Start, React Router, Waku). Supports `llms.txt` and content negotiation via framework route handlers.
Starlight	An Astro docs site framework. `llms.txt` via the `starlight-llms-txt` community plugin (not built-in); static client-side search via Pagefind.
Mintlify	A hosted docs SaaS (with an optional headless Astro mode that still calls Mintlify's search and assistant APIs).
Leadtype	The portable content layer behind any of the above.

Choose a website framework when the main job is publishing a polished docs UI quickly. Consider a hosted platform if you want managed publishing, search, analytics, and AI features and accept that service dependency. Opt for leadtype when you need to own the generated docs artifacts: framework-agnostic markdown, navigation, search, llms.txt, a root llms-full.txt fallback, and optional AGENTS.md package bundles that ship inside npm tarballs.

What leadtype owns

MDX-to-markdown conversion via a remark plugin stack.
llms.txt, markdown mirrors, and root llms-full.txt fallback context for agents.
A static, edge-safe search index plus optional source-grounded answer streaming.
Lint rules for frontmatter, navigation metadata, and internal links.
CLI orchestration so the whole pipeline runs from one command.

What leadtype does not own

Visual UI, theming, or component styling.
Routing, hosting, deployment, or analytics.
A prebuilt MDX component library — your docs app provides those (see Components).

When the combination shines

You want one docs experience across many repos, but each repo keeps its content next to the code it documents. A shared docs app — public, private, or templated — renders that content with your design system. Leadtype handles conversion, search, validation, and agent outputs identically across every repo.

You can also pair leadtype with a website framework: use Fumadocs or Starlight for the UI, and run leadtype alongside it when you want one portable pipeline for generated markdown, search, llms.txt, root llms-full.txt, Agent Readability files, and npm-bundled AGENTS.md docs across frameworks and packages.