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Getting started — author a template and generate a document

This is a hands-on lesson. By the end you will have the app running, authored a template over the /v1 API, and generated a document from it. It's a guided happy path — for the full API surface and every option, follow the pointers to the how-to guide as you go.

Prerequisite: a working checkout. The repo README has the full clone → submodules → pnpm install → build → uv sync → .env.local sequence. Come back here once cd docgen && uv run pytest -m 'not llm' passes.

1. Start the app

cd apps/web && pnpm dev

pnpm dev builds docgen-ui, frees the ports, then runs the Python engine (uvicorn) and the Next app together. Two things are now up:

  • the demo UI at http://127.0.0.1:3000
  • the /v1 API at http://127.0.0.1:8769

Confirm the API is alive:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8769/v1/config-schema | head -c 200

GET /v1/config-schema returns the live, authoritative description of every field a template spec accepts — it's the reference you'll consult while authoring.

2. Author your first template

Everything about a template — sections, prompts, models-per-step, data needs, voice — is authored over /v1. There are two equivalent paths (granular API calls, or author a spec and apply it); this tutorial uses the spec path because it's the fastest way to see a whole template at once.

  1. Open the authoring how-to guide and copy its minimal worked spec (the guide keeps the one authoritative, copy-pasteable example so it never drifts). Save it as my-template.json.
  2. Dry-run it first — validate without writing anything:
curl -s -X POST 'http://127.0.0.1:8769/v1/templates?dry_run=true' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data @my-template.json

A dry run compiles the spec and reports what would be created (or the validation errors). Fix any errors and re-run until it's clean. 3. Apply it — drop ?dry_run=true and the template is created:

curl -s -X POST 'http://127.0.0.1:8769/v1/templates' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data @my-template.json

Refresh the UI — your template is in the library.

3. Generate a document

  1. In the UI, instantiate your template (create a document from it) and fill in any per-document fields.
  2. Click Generate. Watch the pipeline run: gather → compute → synthesize → render. Each section fills in according to its render_mode.
  3. Open the document to read the output, or export it to .docx.

That's the full loop: author → instantiate → generate.

Where to go next