Hosted documentation site

Hosted plan. The documentation site generator itself is free and always will be — npx @tostada-ui/format docs writes the same site, on your own machine, for anyone. This page is about the hosted version: the same site, at a URL, updating itself.

Everything in Documentation site applies here — same pages, same accessibility table, generated by the same code. The difference is that nobody runs anything.

One thing is better here than in the folder: component previews are live. The folder shows a snapshot captured when Tostada last updated its components, because a folder has to work with no network. A hosted site has one, so its component pages render the component itself, wearing your current colours, spacing and type at the moment somebody opens the page. If preview-host is briefly unreachable the preview is replaced by a sentence saying so, and the snippet, the rules and the cross-links carry on unaffected.

Save your library; a minute later the URL shows the change. No command, no re-upload, no "which version is this?" A client's developers can bookmark it, their designers can send it to a new hire, and it is right on the day they open it rather than on the day someone last remembered to regenerate it.

Getting one

There is no button. Hosted sites are set up by us, one at a time, when a URL is part of what you have signed up for — ask, and you get a link back.

That is deliberate rather than unfinished: the address is unguessable and cannot be changed afterwards, which makes it a decision worth a person rather than a form.

It looks like this — on our domain, not a storage provider’s:

app.tostada-ui.app/docs/kj3n8fq2xw9pv4m7bd6cta

Who can see it

Anyone with the link. There is no account, no login, no invitation — a client's whole team, their contractors, and whoever they forward it to.

The link is the access control. It carries enough randomness that it cannot be found by guessing or by trying your company name, but it also cannot be un-sent. Treat it exactly as you would a private document link: fine to share with people you would show the design system to, not something to put on a public page.

Ask and we will take a site down; the files are deleted, and the URL stops working for everyone immediately, including anyone who saved it.

What is never published

The same rule as share links: your edit history stays private. It records who changed what, by email address, so publishing it would publish your team's activity to whoever the link reaches. It is not sent, not hidden — absent.

If updates stop

A site can stop following its library while staying online. Nothing is taken away when that happens: it keeps its URL, every page, every preview, and works exactly as it did.

What it gains is a dated line at the top of every page saying it was generated on such-and-such a date and no longer updates. That notice is written into the pages themselves, so it cannot quietly disappear and leave a year-old site looking current — which is the one thing that would make the free-forever promise dishonest.

Resuming is a switch on our side, and the next save republishes.

What it is not

• Not a website builder. It renders your design system, and only that.
• Not editable in place. Change the library; the site follows.
• Not a live view of the app. It is generated files. That is why it loads instantly, works behind any firewall, and does not need Tostada to be up.