What is Bark?

Bark is a documentation server written on .NET. Point it at a folder of Markdown and it serves a full site with navigation, table of contents, breadcrumbs, and search, all from a single process.

Most documentation tools are static site generators: write Markdown, run a build, deploy the output. Bark renders in memory at startup and again whenever a file changes. Save a file and the running site updates. Nothing to build, nothing to deploy but Bark itself.

How it compares ​

Against a wiki. Confluence stores pages in a database and edits them through a web form, which makes reviewing a change before it goes live awkward. Bark's content is Markdown in a folder. Keep it in git and docs go through the same pull request review as your code.

Against other generators. Hugo, MkDocs and VitePress are the better fit if you are happy with static hosting and a build step. Bark suits teams already running .NET.

Performance ​

Pages are held in memory, so lookups are immediate. Nothing touches disk per request.

• Edits are debounced, so a burst of saves triggers one rebuild.
• Responses carry an ETag, so a returning reader gets a 304 instead of the page again.

Ready to try it out? ​

Continue to Getting Started and have a site running in under a minute.