What is documentation?

documentation.js is a command-line tool that reads JavaScript source code and generates human-readable documentation from it automatically. The idea is that instead of writing a separate documentation file by hand, you annotate your code with specially formatted comments, and the tool converts those comments into a polished output format. The comment format it reads is called JSDoc, a convention where you describe a function, its parameters, and its return values in a structured comment block directly above the code. documentation.js reads those annotations and can understand modern JavaScript syntax including older ES5 code, newer ES2017 features, JSX (used in React-style projects), Vue files, and Flow type annotations. It also tries to figure out some things automatically, like parameter types and structure, so you do not have to document every detail yourself. The output can be generated in several formats: an HTML website, Markdown text, or raw JSON data. For HTML output there is a default template, and the theming system lets you customize the look. One integration connects to GitHub so that generated docs include links back to the exact lines of source code they describe. From the command line, the main operations are: build (produce documentation files), lint (check your JSDoc comments for common mistakes), and readme (inject an API section directly into an existing README file). This last one is useful for keeping a project's README up to date without manual copying. The project describes itself as an open wiki-style open source project, meaning contributors who make meaningful improvements are given direct commit access rather than going through a gated pull-request process. It is published on npm and can be installed globally with a single command.