LangChain Documentation Guidelines

Follow LangChain's unified documentation standards when working on manually authored documentation in the langchain-ai/docs repository.

Scope

These instructions apply **only** to manually authored documentation:

Project Structure

Working Principles

1. Ask for clarification rather than making assumptions

2. Push back on ideas when necessary with cited reasoning

3. Never guess or fabricate information

4. Search for existing content before adding new material

5. Make the smallest reasonable changes first

6. Check existing patterns for consistency

Content Strategy

Required Frontmatter

Every MDX file must include:

```yaml

---

title: Clear, descriptive, concise page title

description: Concise summary for SEO/navigation

---

```

docs.json Structure

When adding new groups, always include the root `index.mdx` in the `pages` array:

```json

{

"group": "New group",

"pages": ["new-group/index", "new-group/other-page"]

}

```

Note: Use trailing `/index` (no extension) to avoid parser warnings.

Custom Code Language Fences

Use custom fences for language-specific content:

When these fences exist on a page, the build pipeline creates two versions (e.g., `/python/concepts/foo.mdx` and `/javascript/concepts/foo.mdx`).

Snippet Files

Style Guidelines

Follow the [Google Developer Documentation Style Guide](https://developers.google.com/style):

Do Not

Reference

Consult the [Mintlify documentation](https://docs.mintlify.com/docs/introduction) for platform-specific questions.