Page actions

Every page has a line under its title and description. On the left it says when the page last changed, from its updated frontmatter or its last git commit, and how long it takes to read when that is three minutes or more. A change in the last month reads as "Updated 3 days ago", with the date in its tooltip. If the page changed since the reader last opened it, the line also says "Changed since your last visit", with the dot the sidebar puts on that page.

On the right are the page's actions. They let a reader copy the page's source, edit it on GitHub, or open it in an AI chat tool.

Copy MarkdownCopied

Copies the page's Markdown source to the clipboard, including the frontmatter. You can paste it straight into a chat with a model, which then has the page without fetching anything.

Raw MarkdownCopied

Every page is also served as plain Markdown:

/docs/writing/markdown        the page
/docs/_vellum/raw/writing/markdown.md   its source

The raw route returns text/markdown and follows gating with no extra configuration: a page the reader cannot see returns a 404 here as well.

vellum:export writes the same files to _vellum/raw/, so the raw links also work on a static site.

Each raw response names its HTML page in a Link: <...>; rel="canonical" header, so search engines treat the HTML page as the original. When versions are enabled, raw responses also carry an X-Vellum-Docs-Version header naming the version. A page with a last-updated date, from its updated frontmatter or its last git commit, gets a Last-Modified header; a page without one gets none. The body stays the file as written.

The changelog has a raw copy too, at /docs/_vellum/raw/changelog.md, served from changelog.path. It leaves out [Unreleased] whenever the HTML page does. See Release notes.

For agentsCopied

The raw Markdown is also useful to tools that read docs on their own, such as coding agents. Vellum points them to it in four ways and offers a search endpoint as well.

llms.txt. /docs/llms.txt is an index of the docs in the llms.txt format: the site name, the index page's description, then the sidebar as ## sections in sidebar order, with a line per page linking to its raw Markdown.

# Acme

> Everything about Acme.

## Docs

- [Home](https://example.com/docs/_vellum/raw/index.md): Everything about Acme.

## Getting started

- [Installation](https://example.com/docs/_vellum/raw/getting-started/installation.md)

Each top-level folder is a section, with anything nested in it flattened in. A run of top-level pages is a section too, headed by the titled separator above it, or by the root meta.json title (Docs without one) before any separator. When a run picks up again after a folder, its heading repeats with "(continued)", so no two sections share a name. The page description follows the link when the page has one.

The changelog is listed too, linking to its raw Markdown. It sits where the sidebar puts it, or, when the sidebar does not list it, last under ## Optional, the heading llms.txt reserves for links an agent can skip when it is short on room.

llms-full.txt. /docs/llms-full.txt is every page's Markdown source in one file, in sidebar order. Each page starts with a header block between two lines of 80 = characters:

================================================================================
Title: Installation
URL: https://example.com/docs/getting-started/installation
Version: v2
Updated: 2026-09-17
================================================================================

Version only appears when versions are enabled, and Updated only when the page has a last-updated date. The changelog belongs to no one version, so its block has no Version, and its source leaves out [Unreleased] whenever the HTML page does.

Both files are built from the same navigation as the sidebar and the sitemap, with the same rules: gated pages are left out even for a signed-in reader, since each is one public file. They cover the latest version only. Links are absolute when app.url is an origin and root-relative otherwise. vellum:export writes both at the export root. Set agents.llms_txt to false to turn them off.

Agents look for llms.txt at the site root, so both files are also served at /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt, on route.domain when that is set. Vellum only adds these routes when your app has no route for the same path, and a route your app defines takes precedence. Set agents.llms_txt_root to false to keep them under the docs prefix only.

The links in llms.txt point under /docs/_vellum/raw/, so keep that path open in robots.txt. Search engines has the rules to use.

An alternate link. Every page's head has <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"> pointing at its raw Markdown, and the response sends the same URL in a Link header.

Content negotiation. Request a page with Accept: text/markdown and the response is the raw Markdown instead of HTML, the same body the raw route returns. This applies when Accept lists text/markdown with a higher preference than text/html, so browsers still get HTML. Gating applies as it does on the raw route. Page responses send Vary: Accept so a cache keeps the two apart. Set agents.content_negotiation to false to turn it off.

A search endpoint. /docs/_vellum/search?q= runs the same search as the browser and returns the top sections as JSON, for clients that cannot use the browser's index. See Search.

Open in ChatGPT / Open in ClaudeCopied

Both open the chat tool with a prompt that points to the page's raw Markdown URL.

The model has to fetch that URL, so this only works for docs on the public internet. For docs on localhost or behind a login, use Copy Markdown and paste the source instead.

Edit on GitHubCopied

Set repo to the base URL of your docs directory in source control:

'repo' => 'https://github.com/acme/app/edit/main/resources/docs',

Vellum appends the page's path relative to vellum.path, so resources/docs/billing/invoices.md becomes https://github.com/acme/app/edit/main/resources/docs/billing/invoices.md.

The link only appears when repo is set. Use an /edit/ URL to open GitHub's editor, or a /blob/ URL to open the file view.

No link is shown for a file whose real path is outside vellum.path, so a symlinked page cannot expose a path from elsewhere on disk.

Changing themCopied

The actions have no config option. To change them, override the view. Vellum registers its views under the vellum namespace, so a file at the matching path in your app takes precedence:

resources/views/vendor/vellum/components/docs/page-actions.blade.php

Creating that file replaces the shipped view, and an empty file removes the actions and leaves the date beside them. To change or remove the whole line, override components/docs/page-meta.blade.php the same way. You do not need to publish anything first. The same works for every other Vellum view.