Sidecar

Edit your static site generator's markdown from the Statamic Control Panel.

You've got a static site generator. LaraDocs, Jigsaw, VitePress, HydePHP, something in that family. Markdown files, front matter, maybe a navigation.php or sidebar.json. It works.

Then you want to edit those docs in the Control Panel — tree, publish forms, Live Preview, the whole Statamic experience — without turning them into Statamic entries first.

That's Sidecar.

It opens the SSG's own files, lets you edit them, and writes them back in that SSG's format. No collections. No Stache copies. No "import your markdown into Statamic and hope for the best." Front matter stays front matter. Folders stay folders. navigation.php stays navigation.php. sidebar.json stays sidebar.json.

Sidecar rides alongside your SSG. It doesn't replace it.

Experimental. APIs and on-disk behavior may change.

How it works

A source is a directory of markdown plus a driver that knows how that SSG thinks.

The driver owns everything that would otherwise be Statamic's job: where files live, how the tree is nested, what happens when you drag a page, how Live Preview renders. Sidecar never stores a tree of its own. It projects one from the SSG and writes rearranges back the same way.

You'll find your sources under Content → Sidecar. Each source gets its own nav item, its own blueprint (editable in the CP), and Live Preview against the SSG's own renderer.

Supported Drivers

Driver	First-party
LaraDocs	✅
Jigsaw	✅
VitePress	✅
HydePHP	✅
Hugo
Astro
Docusaurus
What else should we support?

Want one of the blanks? Write a driver. More on that below.

Installation

composer require statamic/sidecar
php please install:sidecar

The install command sniffs for supported SSG packages, asks you which driver to use, and appends a source to config/sidecar.php. You can also publish the config yourself and do it by hand:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=sidecar-config

Configuration

Each source is a handle, a driver, and a directory:

// config/sidecar.php

'sources' => [
    'docs' => [
        'driver' => 'laradocs',
        'directory' => base_path('docs'),
        // 'title' => 'Documentation',
        // 'read_only' => false,
        // 'blueprint' => 'sidecar.docs',
        // 'preview_url' => '/!/sidecar/laradocs/live-preview',
    ],
],

Key	What it does
driver	laradocs, jigsaw, vitepress, hyde, or a handle you registered
directory	Absolute path to the markdown
title	CP nav label (defaults to the driver's title)
read_only	Browse and preview only — no saving
blueprint	Optional override handle; otherwise the driver's default, which you can customize in the CP
preview_url	Live Preview endpoint override

Multiple sources are fine. Docs in one folder, a changelog in another, whatever. Each gets its own nav item.

Drivers

This is the part that actually matters. Drivers teach Sidecar how this SSG stores structure.

LaraDocs

Nesting is real folders. guide/routing.md lives under guide/. A section is guide/_index.md. Sibling order lives in order front matter. Drag the tree, Sidecar moves files and rewrites order. That's it.

group: is a sidebar bucket, not the section name. Set it on a root page or a section index and LaraDocs treats it as a tab/sidebar grouping. Don't put group: Recipes on recipes/_index.md titled Recipes — you'll get Recipes → Recipes → Recipes. Leave group off the index, or use a parent name that can hold more than one section (Core, Docs). Nested pages can still use group: for the page eyebrow. That doesn't nest them.

If heroicons is installed, the Icon field is a picker and stores the kebab-case name LaraDocs expects (icon: rocket).

Jigsaw

Docs stay flat on disk. The hierarchy lives in navigation.php. Saving the tree rewrites that file and never relocates markdown — Jigsaw doesn't want your files moving around.

'docs' => [
    'driver' => 'jigsaw',
    'directory' => base_path('source/docs'),
    'navigation' => base_path('navigation.php'),
    'url_prefix' => 'docs',
],

VitePress

Docs can live in folders (that's how VitePress routes), but the tree is owned by a Sidecar-managed sidebar.json. Saving the tree rewrites that file and never relocates markdown.

Import it from your VitePress config so the theme and Sidecar share one source of truth:

// .vitepress/config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vitepress'
import sidebar from './sidebar.json'

export default defineConfig({
  themeConfig: { sidebar }
})

'docs' => [
    'driver' => 'vitepress',
    'directory' => base_path('docs'),
    'sidebar' => base_path('docs/.vitepress/sidebar.json'),
    'site_url' => 'http://localhost:5173',
    'preview_url' => 'http://localhost:5173{path}',
    // 'sidebar_key' => '/guide/', // multi-sidebar object: which key this source manages
    // 'base' => '/',
    // 'clean_urls' => true,
],

Live Preview points at vitepress dev. Saved markdown HMR-reloads; unsaved WIP is not rendered.

HydePHP

Nesting is real folders in _docs/. Subdirectories become sidebar groups. A section is guide/index.md (Hyde's index, not _index). Sibling order lives in navigation.priority front matter — numeric filename prefixes (01-routing.md) work too. Drag the tree, Sidecar moves files and rewrites priority. It never writes an order: key.

Hyde's default flattened output means guide/routing.md still publishes to /docs/routing.

install:sidecar detects hyde/framework. Hyde is Laravel Zero, so it usually lives in a subdirectory of the Statamic app — point directory at that _docs/ folder.

'docs' => [
    'driver' => 'hyde',
    'directory' => base_path('hyde/_docs'),
    'site_url' => 'http://localhost:8080',
    'preview_url' => 'http://localhost:8080/docs{path}',
    // 'url_prefix' => 'docs',
    // 'flattened' => true,
],

Turn on Hyde's pretty_urls or preview links will want .html. Live Preview points at php hyde serve. Saved-state only.

Custom drivers

Got an SSG that isn't LaraDocs, Jigsaw, VitePress, or HydePHP? Teach Sidecar how it works.

use Statamic\Sidecar\Facades\Sidecar;

Sidecar::extend('hugo', function ($app, array $config, string $handle) {
    return new App\Sidecar\HugoDriver($config, $handle);
});

Sidecar::pair('some/hugo-package', 'hugo');

extend() registers the driver. pair() tells install:sidecar which Composer package it belongs to, so the command can detect it.

Implement Statamic\Sidecar\Contracts\Driver or extend Statamic\Sidecar\Drivers\Driver. The driver owns paths, tree projection, and how a rearrange gets persisted. Sidecar never writes a tree of its own — if it isn't in the SSG's format, it doesn't exist.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• Statamic 6