// the find
tj/dox
JavaScript documentation generator for node using markdown and jsdoc
Dox is a stdio-based tool that parses JSDoc/markdown comments out of JavaScript source and emits structured JSON, leaving rendering to whatever template or generator consumes it. It's aimed at people building their own doc pipeline rather than anyone wanting a documentation site out of the box.
The unopinionated JSON-out design is the whole point and it's well executed — you get tags, description (split into full/summary/body), ctx (method vs function vs declaration), and code, all separated cleanly so you can build whatever template layer you want. Complex JSDoc type strings (unions, optional `=`, nullable `?`, nested object types) are actually parsed into structured data instead of left as raw strings. The `contextPatternMatchers` array is a genuinely useful escape hatch for extending context detection without forking the lib.
Last push was September 2022 and it's a tj repo, so don't expect fixes or new JSDoc tag support going forward. It only extracts comments and context — you still have to write or find a template/renderer, so 'documentation generator' oversells what you get out of the box. No TypeScript source parsing (types.d.ts exists for consumers, not for handling .ts input), which rules it out for most modern codebases without a transpile step first.