Publishing your docs | Fern Documentation

When you are ready for your docs to be publicly accessible, publish them using the Fern CLI. Choose one of the following approaches: publish only to a production site, or to separate staging and production sites.

Use the Fern Dashboard to manage CLI access, connect your GitHub repository, and monitor analytics and broken links.

Publish to production

For a single production site (no staging environment), run the following command to publish your documentation:

$ fern generate --docs

Example

$ fern generate --docs
$ [docs]: Found 0 errors and 1 warnings. Run fern check --warnings to print out the warnings.
$ [docs]: ✓ All checks passed
$ [docs]: Published docs to https://plantstore.docs.buildwithfern.com
$ ┌─
$ │ ✓  https://plantstore.docs.buildwithfern.com
$ └─

Automate publishing process

Use a GitHub Action workflow to publish your docs when a push is made to the main branch.

Generate token

Use fern token to generate a token for authenticating the Fern CLI in CI/CD environments. The token is specific to your organization defined in fern.config.json and doesn’t expire.

terminal

$ fern token

Add token as a secret

Add the token as a repository secret called FERN_TOKEN.

Create workflow

Create a Publish Docs workflow (example), and reference the secret.

.github/workflows/publish-docs.yml

1 name: Publish Docs
2 
3 on:
4   push:
5     branches:
6       - main
7 
8 jobs:
9   run:
10     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
11     if: ${{ github.event_name == 'push' && contains(github.ref, 'refs/heads/main') && github.run_number > 1 }}
12     steps:
13       - name: Checkout repository
14         uses: actions/checkout@v4
15 
16       - name: Install Fern
17         run: npm install -g fern-api
18 
19       - name: Publish Docs
20         env:
21           FERN_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.FERN_TOKEN }}
22         run: fern generate --docs

Publish to staging and production

To preview changes on a staging site before publishing to production, define multiple instances in your docs.yml file. Once you configure multiple instances, you must use the --instance flag when publishing.

Configure instances

Add both staging and production URLs to your docs.yml file. Don’t include https:// in the URLs.

docs.yml

1 instances:
2   - url: plantstore-prod.docs.buildwithfern.com
3   - url: plantstore-staging.docs.buildwithfern.com

Publish to a specific instance

Use the --instance flag to publish to a specific environment:

$ # Publish to staging
$ fern generate --docs --instance plantstore-staging.docs.buildwithfern.com
$ 
$ # Publish to production
$ fern generate --docs --instance plantstore-prod.docs.buildwithfern.com

After publishing, both instances will appear in the Fern Dashboard.

Automate publishing process

Use GitHub Action workflows to automatically deploy to staging on every push, while keeping production deployments manual.

Generate token

Use fern token to generate a token for authenticating the Fern CLI in CI/CD environments. The token is specific to your organization defined in fern.config.json and doesn’t expire.

terminal

$ fern token

Add token as a secret

Add the token as a repository secret called FERN_TOKEN.

Set up automatic staging deployment workflow

This workflow automatically publishes to your staging instance when changes are pushed to the main branch:

.github/workflows/publish-staging.yml

1 name: Publish Staging Docs
2 
3 on:
4   workflow_dispatch:
5   push:
6     branches:
7       - main
8 
9 jobs:
10   run:
11     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
12     steps:
13       - name: Checkout repository
14         uses: actions/checkout@v4
15 
16       - name: Install Fern
17         run: npm install -g fern-api
18 
19       - name: Validate configuration
20         run: fern check
21 
22       - name: Publish to Staging
23         env:
24           FERN_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.FERN_TOKEN }}
25         run: fern generate --docs --instance plantstore-staging.docs.buildwithfern.com

Set up manual production deployment workflow

This workflow allows you to manually trigger a production deployment from the GitHub Actions UI:

.github/workflows/publish-production.yml

1 name: Publish Production Docs
2 
3 on:
4   workflow_dispatch:
5 
6 jobs:
7   run:
8     runs-on: ubuntu-latest
9     steps:
10       - name: Checkout repository
11         uses: actions/checkout@v4
12 
13       - name: Install Fern
14         run: npm install -g fern-api
15 
16       - name: Validate configuration
17         run: fern check
18 
19       - name: Publish to Production
20         env:
21           FERN_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.FERN_TOKEN }}
22         run: fern generate --docs --instance plantstore-prod.docs.buildwithfern.com

To deploy to production, go to the Actions tab in your GitHub repository, select the workflow, and click Run workflow.

Hosting

When you publish your docs, Fern takes care of hosting them for you. You can also publish your docs to a custom domain.

Self-hosting your docs

If you need access to your docs offline or would like to host your docs on your own server, Fern offers that option as well. Self-hosted docs have limited access to certain features (including Ask Fern and analytics).

Unpublishing your docs

To unpublish a docs site, navigate to the Settings page for your site in the Fern Dashboard and click Unpublish. This makes the domain no longer publicly accessible, but doesn’t delete the site — you can republish it at any time. This is useful for creating draft sites or temporarily hiding a site from public view.