FAQ
General
What is ZAR in one sentence? A GitHub App that reads your code diffs and proposes minimal edits to your Markdown docs so they stay accurate as the code changes. Is ZAR a docs hosting platform like Mintlify? No. ZAR keeps the source Markdown correct; a platform like Mintlify publishes it. They’re complementary — in fact these docs are written to migrate cleanly to Mintlify. Does ZAR write documentation from scratch? No. It edits docs that already exist to match real code changes. It won’t scaffold a new docs site or invent APIs.Behavior
Will ZAR edit my files without asking? No. By default it only comments and opens pull requests. Direct commits require both theauto_commit_enabled setting and the operator’s DOCAGENT_WRITE_COMMITS env var. See Auto-commit.
Will it comment on every commit?
No. The default trigger mode is on_significant_change, and trivial, test-only, and config-only changes are skipped. See Trigger modes.
Why didn’t ZAR say anything on my PR?
Usually because the change wasn’t doc-worthy (tests/config/trivial), the docs already matched, the change is being batched, or a rate limit was hit. The run view shows which. See Troubleshooting.
Can it make docs worse?
ZAR proposes a reviewable PR you approve. It also rejects edits that would break MDX builds or dangle content at end-of-file, and it never invents facts. See Safety & guarantees.
Languages & docs
Which programming languages does it understand? It recognizes Python, TypeScript/TSX, JavaScript/JSX, Go, Java, Kotlin, and Rust as code, with the deepest symbol-level extraction (functions, classes, methods) for Python and TypeScript/TSX. It still reads diffs in any language; symbol awareness is best in those. Which doc files does it touch?.md, .mdx, and .markdown. It ignores build output and navigation files like meta.json.
Does it support multilingual docs?
Yes — Nextra-style language variants (e.g. index.en.mdx, index.kk.mdx). It mirrors an edit across sibling languages and preserves frontmatter and imports. See MDX & multilingual.
What language does it write in?
The same language each doc is already in. ZAR detects the language and won’t switch it. A style guide tunes the wording within that language.
Setup & hosting
Do I have to self-host? No. Use the hosted app at app.zarlabs.tech. Self-hosting is available if you want full control. See Self-hosting. What permissions does it need? Metadata (read), Contents (read & write), Pull requests, Issues, Checks, and Commit statuses (read & write). Write to Contents is only used if you enable auto-commit. See Permissions & events. Is there a CI gate? Yes, optional. It blocks merges when docs look stale via adocagent/ci-gate check. Available on Team/Enterprise plans. See CI gate.