16 September: MCP docs server generator, new search controls & more

You can now MCP servers so AI tools can interact with your docs, plus we’ve added new controls for users searching your docs, improved the page outline, and more

✨ New and noteworthy

Generate an MCP server from your docs

GitBook can now automatically create an MCP server for your documentation.

When enabled in your site’s customization options, you give your users the option to quickly copy a link to your MCP server and connect it to other tools. By doing this, your users can access knowledge from your docs in whichever platform they choose to connect to.

For example, if your user adds your docs MCP server to VS Code, they could quickly answer questions or add information from your docs into their coding environment via calls to the MCP server.

You can enable or disable this this in your site’s Customization > Configure menu, under Page actions. Once enabled, users can quickly copy a link to your docs MCP server from the Page actions menu and paste it into configuration sections on other platforms.

We’re adding this to our extensive list of other AI documentation optimizations — including llms.txt and llms-full.txt, easy Markdown page exports, and quick options to open pages in ChatGPT or Claude.

Search scope controls

We’re adding a new way to control search scope on your docs site.

Before, users could only choose the search scope if your site used variants for things like localizations or versioned docs. Now, your users can also choose which site sections to search within.

By default search will always show the best match — which is the user’s current variant and the default variant of every other section. They can choose to only search in your current section, or broaden the search to include all variants across alls sections.

No matter what, GitBook will automatically show the right set of buttons to make it as easy as possible for your site’s visitors to find what they need. For example, in our own docs we only show two buttons — because we have no variants.

It’s also worth noting that we no longer include language variants in the search scope. We assume most users won’t want to search multiple languages, and results in other languages can be confusing and take up space in the results section.

Page outline improvements

We’ve made some small but useful improvements to the page outline in our editor.

First, we’ve separated the On this page title from the outline itself and added an icon to make it easier to find. Plus, the title now stays sticky, even on long pages with lots of sections.

We’ve also improved the scroll behavior for longer pages. If the page outline is scrollable, it stays in sync with the page’s scroll position, keeping the active item at the top as you scroll.

We think this will make scrolling through your content — especially on longer pages — much easier.

Improved

• We’ve updated the information shown when a change request is blocked from merging by merge rules. If you open the change request’s Overview panel, it’ll now show whether merging is blocked or allowed, with a list of rules explaining why.

• You’ll now see a new option to share your newly published docs on social platforms, so you can immediately promote your docs once they’re live!

• We’ve add the option to filter site redirects to make it easier to manage a large number of redirects in the app.

• We’ve made some subtle (but nice) improvements to the inline palette in the editor. So when you highlight some text the new palette has improved shadows and a slightly smaller size so it blocks less of your content.

Fixed

• Fixed the way the emoji picker displays in the change request review popover.

• Updated the icon for merge rules.

• Fixed a bug that meant the Merge button sometimes didn’t display on an open change request if there were blocking merge rules. Now it will show, but be disabled.

• Fixed an issue that meant adding a heading to a hint block would also incorrectly create an anchor link for the header. This no longer happens.

• Fixed a bug that meant selecting something in a menu palette would sometimes cause the palette to jump to a different position. Now the position remains stable when you select items.

• Fixed a bug that meant the Copy option wasn’t working for AI responses in the in-app Ask or search palette.

• Fixed a bug that meant sometimes, when you created a new section group in your site’s settings, it would add the group to the top of the site structure, rather than the end. Now it will always be added at the end.

---

We’re constantly working to improve the way you and your team work in GitBook, and value your input on features, bugs, and more. Make sure you head to our official GitBook community to join the discussion.