Next.js and React

In a Next.js app, or any React app with a server, ondocs is three pieces: an index built by the CLI, a route handler made with createAskHandler, and the <AskDialog /> component. The ondocs website is built exactly this way.

Install for Next.js

npm i ondocs ai @ai-sdk/openai @radix-ui/react-dialog cmdk

@radix-ui/react-dialog and cmdk work with React 18.3 and 19.

Index your content

Build the index from the folder that holds your pages, and commit ask-index.json. Running it before every build keeps it current, and only changed chunks are embedded again:

{
  "scripts": {
    "index": "ondocs index content --base-url /docs -e openai:text-embedding-3-small --dimensions 512 --llms-txt public",
    "prebuild": "npm run index"
  }
}

--base-url /docs makes content/setup.md cite /docs/setup. The CLI detects a Next.js site and leaves (group) folders out of URLs. Fumadocs and Nextra have guides of their own: Fumadocs and Nextra.

Citations link to those URLs, so the app must serve the pages there. A new create-next-app project has no content/ folder and no /docs route: add your pages and a route under app/docs/ that renders them, or set --base-url to where your pages already are.

--llms-txt public also writes llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown copy of each page into public/, which Next.js serves from the site’s root: /docs/setup.md for /docs/setup. See llms.txt and Markdown pages.

Mount the route handler

To add the endpoint to Next.js, export the handler as POST from a route handler. It is a plain (request: Request) => Promise<Response> function:

import { openai } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { createAskHandler, memoryRateLimit } from 'ondocs/server';
import index from '../../../ask-index.json';

export const POST = createAskHandler({
  index,
  model: openai('gpt-5.4-mini'),
  embeddingModel: openai.embedding('text-embedding-3-small'),
  siteName: 'Acme Docs',
  rateLimit: memoryRateLimit({ limit: 10, windowMs: 60_000 }),
});

Importing the JSON bundles the index with the function, and it is loaded into memory once per server instance. Set OPENAI_API_KEY in your deployment’s environment.

Serve agents over MCP

The same index answers coding agents from a second route, with createMcpHandler. Without an embeddingModel, it calls no model:

import { createMcpHandler } from 'ondocs/server';
import index from '../../../ask-index.json';

const handler = createMcpHandler({ index, siteName: 'Acme Docs' });

export const POST = handler;
export const GET = handler;
export const DELETE = handler;
export const OPTIONS = handler;

Agents connect to /api/mcp, as in claude mcp add --transport http acme-docs https://docs.acme.dev/api/mcp. See MCP server.

Render the dialog

Render the dialog once, near the root, from a client component. onNavigate sends citations through the Next.js router instead of a full page load:

'use client';
import { AskDialog } from 'ondocs/react';
import 'ondocs/react/styles.css';
import 'ondocs/embed/launcher.css';
import { useRouter } from 'next/navigation';

export function Ask() {
  const router = useRouter();
  return (
    <AskDialog
      launcher
      suggestions={['How do I install it?', 'Which runtimes are supported?']}
      onNavigate={(url, event) => {
        event.preventDefault();
        router.push(url);
      }}
    />
  );
}

Then render <Ask /> in app/layout.tsx. launcher shows a floating “Ask AI” button; the dialog also opens with ⌘I or Ctrl+I.

Open it from your own button

Leave launcher out and pass trigger to open the dialog from an element of your own, such as a search box in your header: <AskDialog trigger={<button type="button">Ask the docs</button>} />. Change the shortcut with shortcut="k", for ⌘K on a site whose only search is this dialog, or turn it off with shortcut={false}.

Other React frameworks and runtimes

createAskHandler returns a Web-standard handler, so it mounts anywhere that speaks Request and Response: app.post('/api/ask', (c) => handler(c.req.raw)) in Hono, Bun.serve({ fetch: handler }), or export default { fetch: handler } in a Cloudflare Worker. React Router, Remix, SvelteKit and Astro endpoints also receive a Request, which you pass to the handler as it is. The dialog only needs React and the endpoint’s URL.

Build your own interface

useAsk() from ondocs/react is the hook behind the dialog. It returns ask, stop and reset, plus the streaming answer, its sources and a status, so you can render answers inline on a page instead of in a dialog. AskAnswer renders an answer with clickable citations. See The ask dialog.

Keep the index fresh in CI

Add the check to CI so a pull request that changes content without rebuilding the index fails:

npx ondocs index content --base-url /docs --check   # exit 1 if stale

The check never calls a model and needs no API key.