Preparing your repository for LiveDoc

by Jeny Amatya

20 November 2024

Last updated 22 July 2025

Getting started

How to prepare your repository for LiveDoc

To ensure that LiveDoc can generate an accurate and insightful dynamic summary from your repository, please follow the following guidelines below:

Repository hosting
Your repository must be hosted on either GitHub or Azure DevOps.
Access permissions
You must provide a personal access token (PAT) with read-only access to your repository. More information
Structure your README.md using section markers
Use special HTML-style comment tags in your README.md file to define key documentation sections. These markers help LiveDoc identify and extract relevant blocks of text automatically.
The more clearly you separate and label these sections, the more accurately LiveDoc can reflect them in the generated summary.
Add $livedoc$ or !Important keywords in code comments
LiveDoc scans your source code for the following special inline comment keywords:
- !Important
- $livedoc$
  These keywords help surface developer context that may not be visible in the documentation, such as technical debt, future plans, or critical implementation details—like highlighting critical logic or entry points, and flagging notes or deprecations.

An example of a README.md file:

```markdown
<!-- Section: Overview -->
## Overview
Project 'Hello World' is a web-based application...

<!-- Section: Configuration -->
## Configuration
Clone the repository...

<!-- Section: Installation -->
## Installation
Install the npm packages...
```

An example of a source code file:

```csharp
// !Important: This is the starting point of the workflow
[FunctionName("AddNewModule")]
public async Task<IActionResult> AddNewModule() {
    ...
}

// $livedoc$ TODO: This function needs refactoring. It uses xyz namespace which will be deprecated in July 2025
[Function("GenerateResults")]
public async Task<IActionResult> GenerateResults() {
    ...
}
```