Changelog

(feat): fern generate --docs --guest now uploads your fern/ folder with the site, so connecting a GitHub repository after claiming the site adds the folder to it. Files ignored by git, .env* files and node_modules are left out. Pass --no-source to publish without it.

(fix): fern generate --docs now sends the time the publish started. When two publishes of the same docs site overlap, the one that started later stays live, even if its build finishes first.

(feat): Add fern instructions [topic], which prints task-scoped instructions for coding agents working in a Fern project. With no topic it prints the topic index from the Fern docs; with a topic (for example fern instructions docs publish domain) it prints that page as Markdown, without the docs site’s agent preamble. It needs no login or workspace and is exempt from version redirection, so it works in projects that pin an older CLI.

(feat): Add an optional button-text field to the ai-search/ai-chat docs.yml config. It replaces the “Ask AI” label on the docs header button and in the search dialog.

(fix): Preserve repository files when GitHub SDK generation is routed through sdk-gen-api. The CLI now forwards the configured GitHub license and supplies the runtime snippet path for GitHub outputs, so LICENSE, README.md, reference.md, and CONTRIBUTING.md are generated before publishing.

(feat): Add fern docs export to download your live Fern-hosted docs as a static site (--format html), Markdown (--format md) or one PDF (--format pdf).

(fix): Serve agents.robots-txt, agents.llms-txt, and agents.llms-full-txt files that are not named robots.txt, llms.txt, or llms-full.txt (or that live in a subfolder) on the new docs hosting. The configured file is now also published at its well-known path.

(fix): fern generate --guest no longer prints “Authentication required. Please run ‘fern login’…” after a successful run. The end-of-run generator upgrade check asked sdk-gen-api for newer versions with an account token; without an account it now stays quiet instead.

(feat): fern generate --guest prints, for each generated SDK, its build ID and dashboard link (/sdk/<buildId>), where the SDK can be re-downloaded for 7 days and claimed; claiming the session moves the builds into the claimed organization.

(fix): fern generate --version AUTO can now use sdk-gen-api for legacy generators.yml SDK targets with GitHub output.

(feat): C/C++ library docs: structs show their typedef struct X X; line, anonymous enum { ... } values are listed on the enums index, and array extents are kept on struct fields (with the matching parser release). New cpp config: options: organize-by: header writes a headers/ folder with one page per source header; include, exclude and exclude-symbols select which files and symbols are parsed (Doxygen INPUT / EXCLUDE / EXCLUDE_PATTERNS / EXCLUDE_SYMBOLS). include-undocumented-macros: true remains the way to render #defines without a Doxygen comment.

(feat): Add fern docs dev stop, which cleanly stops the fern docs dev server on port 3000, or on the port given with --port, so agents and CI can shut down local docs without finding and killing the process. It exits 0 with a message when there is nothing to stop, and --json writes the result to stdout. It uses a new local-only POST /__fern/shutdown route on the fern docs dev server, alongside GET /__fern/dev-server, which identifies the server. Both routes only accept requests from the same machine that carry the x-fern-docs-dev: 1 header. Once the server is ready, fern docs dev prints how to stop it: press Ctrl-C, run fern docs dev stop --port <port>, or run kill <pid> with the server’s PID. With --json, the ready event includes the same instructions in a stop object (keys, command, kill).

(fix): fern generator upgrade and fern automations upgrade no longer move a generators.yml entry to a version at or past its SDK Config cutover (for example TypeScript 4.0.0+, Python 6.0.0+), which fern generate rejects. With --include-major, the generator upgrades within its current major instead. Cutover versions are reported under “SDK Config migration required” with a fern sdk migrate instruction rather than an --include-major hint, and fern automations upgrade --json lists them in sdkConfigMigrationRequired.

(fix): fern generate --docs --guest prints the published site’s own claim link again, next to the guest session’s claim link. Opening it enables the Claim button in the site’s banner, which claims just the docs site into an organization you administer; the session link (Claim it to keep this work, or fern claim) still claims the whole session.

(fix): fern generate now lets sdk-gen-api resolve omitted SDK versions instead of requiring --version. fern generate --preview --version AUTO also resolves the semantic version from the configured GitHub repository while keeping the preview download-only.

(feat): Remote generation now sends SHA-256 digests of its inputs to Fiddle: every spec, overlay and overrides file referenced by generators.yml, generators.yml itself, and the generator’s entry in it. Fiddle uses them to build a signed provenance record for the generated SDK.

(feat): fern docs md generate now keeps LaTeX math ($…$ and $$…$$) in Python library docstrings intact instead of escaping its braces, shows {, < and > inside inline code literally instead of as {/<, and renders > [!NOTE]-style alerts (which the Python parser now emits for reStructuredText admonitions) as Fern callouts.

(fix): fern generate now builds SDKs for proto (gRPC) APIs in generators.yml on Fern’s original generation service, so fern init --grpc followed by fern generate works without setting FERN_USE_SDK_GEN_API=false.

(fix): fern init --grpc and fern init --proto <path> no longer fail with “gRPC initialization is not supported by this version of fern init”. They now always write a generators.yml, since SDK Config does not support gRPC yet.

(feat): Point unauthenticated non-interactive runs at --guest. fern generate --docs run without a login or FERN_TOKEN from a script or agent now fails on the missing account first (naming --guest as the way to publish without one) instead of on the production-site confirmation, and no longer prints the site URL with a doubled https://. fern init without --organization in non-interactive mode derives the organization from the directory name instead of failing, and fern init --docs prints the publish command to run next (fern generate --docs --guest when there is no account).

(feat): Docs can now show SDK snippets from sdk-gen for some languages and from Fern’s dynamic IR for the others in the same publish. A language whose snippets were read from sdk-gen no longer gets a dynamic IR built, uploaded or warned about, and the publish log names the source of each language. The warning for a snippets: entry that matched nothing no longer claims sdk-config.yml SDKs have no snippets.