2026-08-19 Documentation team meeting notes

vision doc: nix.dev/maintainers/vision.md at master · NixOS/nix.dev · GitHub

Summary

@trespaul and @hsjobeki have been busy, so not much has happened since last time. The main outcomes: Some review-requested PRs were triaged, a project board for tracking docs.nixos.org progress was created during the meeting, and the new custom theme PR (nix.dev#1278) will be merged and iterated on. The plan is to deploy whatever is running in two weeks, replacing what docs.nixos.org currently shows.

Content of the meeting

Status

@trespaul tried to join the marketing meeting to discuss design, but it was cancelled early. Both @trespaul and @hsjobeki have been busy with their work and life, so not much has happened from their sides since the last meeting.

PR review

@c1e0 pinged for review of these in the documentation Matrix channel:

Background: They are a technical-writer doing sponsored contributions by Commons Caretakers working through
how-technical-writers-can-help-with-nix. A list of open work the team created a month ago.

  • nixpkgs#543682: merged. Definitely an improvement, but more work is still needed. Maybe together with the JS people.
  • nixpkgs#543687: open, waiting for the Haskell maintainers.
  • nixpkgs#547777: was already merged.
  • nixpkgs#547666: asked to make only one commit that builds alone; will merge after squashing.

Codemods for migration

@hsjobeki showed the WIP nav converter. A codemod to migrate the includes feature of nrd: nixpkgs#554651.

@trespaul had the same thought, and noted we might need more codemods for other Markdown features he came across.

Project board

@trespaul asked whether there is a project board just tracking docs.nixos.org progress.

@hsjobeki: there wasn’t one specifically for the migration, but we created a “view” now: NixOS project 15, view 12. It will be populated over the next weeks.

Theme PR (nix.dev#1278)

@trespaul walked the meeting attendants through nix.dev#1278:

  • Motivation: create something that does not feel like Starlight. Something that can carry the “Nixos” feeling.
  • So far it only adds some primitives and replaces the landing page.
  • Fonts are not yet part of the PR.
  • Short discussion about layout, dark/light mode and responsiveness

The discussion went a bit off topic about fonts:

  • We probably need one title font (maybe Road159, same as homepage).
  • And a body font for prose text. Candidates: Geist, Inter, Atkinson Hyperlegible. (Geist is Vercel’s brand font.) Let’s go with Inter for now until we decide.
  • @hsjobeki stated: fonts are not a focus point yet. We want good readability through a general font first, can iterate on choosing the correct fonts later.

@trespaul offered to split the PR up. @hsjobeki: not worth the effort; it seems reasonably scoped. Keep the font ideas for the next PRs.

@hsjobeki:

  • Going to merge PR nix.dev#1278; the layout and general direction seem right.
  • Merging and deploying are still decoupled.
  • Let’s iterate with some more PRs.
  • We are going to deploy whatever runs in two weeks.
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