Boltdocs 2.9.0 — DUI, Feedback, Math, and a Lot of Polish

This one's about sharing

2.8.0 was about scale — code splitting, budgets, strict types. 2.9.0 is about taking the pieces I built and pushing them further out into the world.

DUI Goes Independent

I built @bdocs/dui as an internal toolkit for Boltdocs' CLI — colored output, spinners, tables, progress bars, the usual terminal UI stuff. But the more I used it, the more I thought: why keep this to myself?

So I split it into its own repository — bolt-docs/dui — with a proper API, documentation, and a live playground at dui-terms.vercel.app. Anyone can use it now, not just Boltdocs. Better API surface, better types, better everything.

And yeah — it's still the fastest terminal UI library out there. Boltdocs just tends to make everything faster.

Native Feedback Support

I wanted a way for readers to tell me when something's wrong — or when it's right. So I built a feedback system directly into Boltdocs.

Drop the config in and every page gets a thumbs up/down widget. It works in two modes:

• Dev/Preview: a Vite middleware intercepts POST requests to /api/feedback — zero setup
• Production: deploy a serverless function using the handleFeedbackRequest export (or Netlify, Cloudflare, AWS, Vercel)

The useFeedback hook gives you rating, comment, submit, and all the state management. Code blocks can have their own per-snippet feedback too — check out showCodeBlockFeedback on the useCodeBlock hook.

Head to the feedback docs for the full setup.

Plugin-Math: Beautiful Equations

I've wanted this for a while. @bdocs/plugin-math lets you write LaTeX in your MDX using familiar $...$ and $...$ delimiters:

When $a \ne 0$, there are two solutions to $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$ and they are

$ x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a} $

Under the hood it uses a transformSource hook to convert those delimiters into <Math> and <BlockMath> components before the MDX parser even sees them. KaTeX handles the rendering on the client side — CSS loaded from CDN, zero configuration required.

Install it with pnpm add @bdocs/plugin-math, add mathPlugin() to your config plugins, and you're done. Read the plugin-math docs for details.

transformSource — A New Plugin Hook

Speaking of transformSource — it's now a first-class lifecycle hook in the plugin API. It runs on raw MDX source before compilation, so you can transform text patterns, inject content, or preprocess syntax before the MDX parser touches it.

Multiple plugins can each register a transformSource hook and they chain — each output feeds into the next. The math plugin was the first real use case, but I see a lot of potential here for custom syntax extensions, templating, or preprocessing.

Check the plugin docs for the full hook signature.

Dev Flags: --port, --host, --force

Three flags I finally added to boltdocs dev:

• --port <number> — dev server port (defaults to 5173)
• --host [address] — bind to a specific address, or bare --host to expose to your local network
• --force — force Vite dependency re-optimization

Nothing fancy — just flags I kept typing manually and got tired of it. Full docs on the CLI page.

Bug Squashes & Polish

This release had a solid round of fixes for things that have been bothering me:

• Theme flash on navigation — the dark/light mode switch no longer flickers when navigating between pages
• collapsible: true / collapsed: false in meta_loaders — these sidebar config options were being ignored. Now they work as expected
• Page-nav flat routes — the page navigation component now correctly flattens nested routes
• i18n sync — fixed a race condition where switching locales could leave some UI elements untranslated
• Code-block API improvements — the useCodeBlock hook got better typing, LangIcon resolution, and the custom pre component API is more predictable

Plugin-Image-Optimizer

A new internal package: @bdocs/plugin-image-optimizer. It's a fork of vite-plugin-image-optimizer — but I optimized it for Boltdocs.

What's different:

• Persistent caching — images aren't re-optimized on every build. Cache is keyed by content hash and survives restarts
• Parallel processing — worker threads use all available cores (minus one) with zero-copy buffer transfer
• Scale integration — works with Boltdocs' AssetCache system and respects the .boltdocs/cache/ directory structure
• Stats output — a DUI-powered table shows how much each format saved

It handles PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, TIFF, and SVG (via Sharp + SVGO). The existing docs site plugins section will get a page for it soon — for now, check the package README.

Documentation Refresh

I spent time updating the official docs across the board — the plugin system page, the CLI reference, the component guides, and the integration docs all got cleaned up. The feedback and math pages are brand new, and the code-blocks guide is much more complete.

What's Next

I'm already working on the next round. Here's what's coming:

• Giscus — comment/discussion integration for docs pages
• Vercel Analytics & Speed Insights — one-click analytics with zero config
• Google Search Console Verification — meta tag injection for site verification
• Search API improvements — better ranking, fuzzy matching, and result previews
• Spanish documentation — the official docs will get a full Spanish translation

Install or update:

pnpm add boltdocs@latest

Check the full docs to explore everything new.