Sources

Open the Sources section of your project's admin panel, directly under MCP and Agents.

What can I connect as a source?#

Docsbook sources come in five kinds — Your project, Documentation platforms, Knowledge bases, Code and APIs and Community — and most of them connect by pasting one address. A published documentation site is a website whoever built it, so Mintlify, GitBook, ReadMe, Docusaurus, Read the Docs and the rest need nothing set up per vendor.

The section is a table of every kind of source Docsbook knows about — Your project, Documentation platforms, Knowledge bases, Code and APIs and Community, narrowed through a Filters menu rather than divided into grouped sections. Each connection gets its own row: two connected websites are two rows, not one row you have to open to see them. A kind with nothing connected still gets exactly one grey row. Most kinds connect in one paste — a published documentation site is a website whoever built it, so Mintlify, GitBook, ReadMe, Docusaurus, Read the Docs and the others need nothing set up per vendor.

Grey means two different things, and the row says which:

• Not connected — the row offers a Connect. Reading it works today.
• Not available yet — the row offers no button, and prints what it would need: an authorisation you grant once, a bot token, or a reader for a repository host we do not read yet. Where a workaround exists the row names it — a public help centre connects as a Website today.

A row without a button is deliberate. A Connect that cannot connect would make every other row on the screen untrustworthy.

How do I connect a source?#

Press Connect on a row, or the New Source button above the table for anything at all. Either way there is one field, and the address decides what the source is and which row it lands under — not the row you pressed:

If the address disagrees with the row you opened, the dialog says so before you commit.

A link pasted from an issue or a pull request connects the repository, not the issue. Tracking parameters (?utm_source=…) are dropped, so the same page pasted from a tweet and from your address bar is one source rather than two.

A project can connect more than one of the same kind — two websites, two repositories, two forums. Use New Source for the next one too; it lands as its own row beside the one you already have.

Two entries appear without you adding them, and neither can be removed here:

• This site's repo — the repository your documentation is built from.
• From Branding — the Site source URL, if your workspace set one. It still lives on the Branding card.

Each connected source can carry a short note about why it is connected. That note is not decoration: the assistant reads it as instruction.

Online, paused, and what the green dot means#

Every connected source shows a green dot and the word Online. A paused one shows a grey dot and Paused.

That status means the source is connected and your agents may read it. It is not a health check. Nothing pings the host, and nothing checks the repository still exists — a status light that no code writes is worse than no light at all. The honest signal is its own Last used column, written only when a tool actually fetched the source successfully.

Each row carries its address as a chip and its own controls: Disconnect keeps a source in the list and stops anything reading it — press it again (it becomes Connect) to resume. Remove takes the connection off the list outright. Open visits the address itself. The two ways to stop reading a source are different on purpose: "stop reading this for now" should not make you retype the address later.

What reads a connected source?#

Three things read a Docsbook source: the assistant in your admin panel, your own MCP agents, and scheduled background runs. Nothing else does — a connected source is not crawled on a timer and does not become part of your published documentation.

The assistant in your admin panel. Its two tools, list_sources and read_source, are available on every turn rather than behind a lookup, and its instructions name your connected sources literally — a rule that says "check your sources" without naming them is one a model cannot follow.

Your own MCP agents. The same two tools are served over your project's MCP endpoint, so a source you register means the same thing in Claude Code or Cursor as it does here. See the MCP server reference.

Background runs. Scheduled prompts and agent runs read them too, which is where it matters most: there is nobody sitting there to paste a link.

A repository read without a path lists its readable files; with one, it returns that file. A website read without a path returns several of its pages as Markdown, discovered from the site's own sitemap and scoped to the section you connected — connect acme.com/docs and the blog stays out of it. Sites with no sitemap return the entry page alone, and the result says so, so a thin read is never mistaken for a thin site.

Which runs can actually read a source?#

Not every tool reaches a source, so the panel says which do rather than implying they all can. Wherever a run is listed — the strip under an MCP tool's description, and an agent's own settings — the chips are drawn in two states:

• Lit — this run fetches the source: your site's pages, your repository's files.
• Unlit — this run knows the source is connected and will not fetch it. Ask the assistant instead; it has no such limit.
• Nothing at all — this run reaches no source. A settings write has no business reading your repository, and a chip there would say otherwise.

Why connect a source at all?#

Because a source is what turns "update the documentation" from a guess into a read. Prices, plan names, limits, endpoints, version numbers and behaviour all change faster than documentation does. Without a source, an assistant asked about any of them either says it does not know or invents something plausible — and a plausible invention is the version that ships to your readers.

With one connected, that question has an address. The assistant reads your pricing page and corrects the three pages that quote the old tier; it reads the repository and finds the four things your quickstart claims that the code stopped doing.

What does reading a source draw on?#

list_sources reads rows Docsbook already stores and is charged as an ordinary read. read_source leaves the Docsbook network to fetch your repository or your website — and a website source fetches several pages per call — so it is charged as an outbound call. Both come off the balance of the project the call is about. Amounts are on the Docsbook pricing page.

Next steps#

Open Sources in your project's admin panel and connect the repository your product is built from — it is the source that answers the most questions.

Related#

• MCP Server — the same two tools, for your own agents.
• AI Chat — the assistant on your docs site.
• Chat Hooks — the other way to hand the model a fact it cannot read.
• MCP tools reference — list_sources and read_source in full.