Quick Start

Initialize a New Book

The fastest way to start:

guidebook init my-book

This creates:

my-book/
├── book.json       # Configuration
├── README.md       # Introduction (becomes index.html)
└── SUMMARY.md      # Table of contents

Edit SUMMARY.md to add chapters, then start writing.

Manual Setup

Alternatively, create the structure yourself:

my-book/
├── README.md       # Introduction (becomes index.html)
├── SUMMARY.md      # Table of contents
└── chapter1.md     # Your content

README.md

# My Book

Welcome to my book!

SUMMARY.md

# Summary

* [Introduction](README.md)
* [Chapter 1](chapter1.md)

chapter1.md

# Chapter 1

This is the first chapter.

Preview Your Book

cd my-book
guidebook serve

Open http://localhost:4000 in your browser.

The server watches for file changes and automatically reloads.

Build for Production

guidebook build -o _book

This creates a _book folder with static HTML files ready to deploy.

Deploy

Upload the _book folder to any static hosting:

  • GitHub Pages
  • Netlify
  • Vercel
  • Cloudflare Pages
  • Any web server