Publish Backstage TechDocs via the MkDocs integration and an external storage bucket
domain: backstage.io · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Add a techdocs annotation to the component's catalog-info.yaml: backstage.io/techdocs-ref: dir:. to tell TechDocs where to find the docs source.
Create an mkdocs.yml at the repo root with site_name and a plugins list containing techdocs-core; install the mkdocs-techdocs-core Python package to get the full plugin bundle.
Configure TechDocs in app-config.yaml to use techdocs.builder: external and set techdocs.publisher.type to one of googleGcs, awsS3, or azureBlobStorage, providing the bucket name and credentials.
In CI, run npx @techdocs/cli generate --source-dir . --output-dir ./site and npx @techdocs/cli publish --publisher-type <type> --storage-name <bucket> --entity <namespace/kind/name> to build and publish docs.
Backstage reads published docs from the storage bucket at runtime; ensure the storage bucket is accessible from the Backstage backend and that CORS is configured if using a browser-side reader.
Verify docs appear in the TechDocs tab in Backstage by navigating to the component's entity page and confirming content renders from the external bucket.
Known gotchas
Using techdocs.builder: local (the default) generates docs at request time inside the Backstage backend, which does not scale; switch to external builder and a CI publish step for production use.
The techdocs-core MkDocs plugin must be installed in the same Python environment that runs the generate command; version mismatches between techdocs-cli and mkdocs-techdocs-core can cause missing content or broken navigation.
The entity reference passed to techdocs publish must exactly match the namespace/kind/name in catalog-info.yaml (case-sensitive); mismatches cause the docs to publish successfully but never appear in the UI.
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