Navigation tab

The Navigation tab (left sidebar of the editor) shows your site's navigation tree exactly as readers see it — tabs at the top, groups under each tab, pages inside each group. Everything in this tree is driven by nookdocs.config.json#navigation; the editor is just a visual layer on top of that.

Right-click context menu

Right-clicking any node in the tree opens a context menu. The available actions depend on what you clicked:

On a tab, group, anchor, or dropdown

• Add a page — create a new MDX file in the repo and link it here

• Add a group — create a nested group inside the current entry

• Add an anchor — append a new Anchor to the root navigation. The anchor starts as { anchor: "New anchor", href: "" } — click it then right-click → Settings to fill in the label, icon, and href.

• Add a dropdown — append a new Dropdown to the root navigation. Starts as { dropdown: "New dropdown", pages: [] } — configure via Settings.

• Add existing file — link an MDX file that already exists in the repo but wasn't in the nav

• Settings — open the per-entry settings slide-out (see below)

• Convert to group / tab — swap between the two top-level shapes

• Duplicate — clone the entry (useful for versioned docs setups)

• Delete — remove from navigation (prompts whether to also delete the underlying MDX)

On a page

• Settings — open the page settings slide-out (frontmatter editor)

• Convert to group — promote a single page into a group container

• Duplicate — clone the MDX file under a new path

• Delete — remove the page from both nav and repo

Settings panel

Right-click → Settings opens a slide-out on the right. Fields depend on the entry type:

Shared fields (every entry type)

• Title — display label (tab / group / anchor / dropdown key in config)

• Icon — Lucide icon name (searchable picker)

• Tag — toggle on, then type the badge text (NEW / BETA / 2.0 — truncates at 8 chars). Off removes the badge.

• Hidden — toggle to remove from the sidebar without deleting

Group-only

• Root page — path to the page that loads when the group label is clicked (requires interaction.drilldown: true in config)

• Directory — auto-render children on the root page as an accordion or card grid

• Expanded — auto / open / closed — overrides the default "expand if contains active page"

• OpenAPI spec — per-group override for the API reference generator

Anchor-only

• Description — subtitle shown under the anchor label

• Link (href) — external URL; mutually exclusive with children

• Expanded — toggle state for anchors that have pages / groups

Dropdown-only

• Description — subtitle shown in the rich dropdown header

• Expanded — persists in reader's localStorage once toggled

Tab-only

• Icon — shown left of the tab label

• Link (href) — turn the tab into an external link (skips the sidebar)

• OpenAPI spec — per-tab override

• Per-tab anchors — repeater for anchors scoped to this tab's sidebar. Each row has a label, icon, and optional href. Leave href empty to create a section header with no target. Anchors that already have nested pages / groups children (hand-edited in nookdocs.config.json) show a hint and their href field locks — remove them from the repeater or edit the file directly to change children.

• Per-tab dropdowns — repeater for collapsible dropdowns at the top of this tab's sidebar. Each row has a label, icon, and optional description. Existing nested children are preserved across saves; add pages to a dropdown via the tree's right-click → Add a page.

Drag-to-reorder

Drag a tree node onto a sibling to reorder it. Reordering works within the same parent — you can resequence pages inside a group, or groups inside a tab.

Keyboard

• Right-click — context menu (only way to reach anchor/dropdown creation today)

• Enter (on a selected page) — opens the MDX in Monaco

• Esc — close the Settings panel or context menu

Working with Phase 3+ entries

Anchors and dropdowns are root-level by design — they always sit above the group list at the top of the sidebar. Creating them from the context menu appends to the end of the navigation array; drag them in JSON if you want a different order.

Per-tab anchors and dropdowns have their own repeaters in a tab's Settings panel — see the Tab-only section above. Nested children inside an anchor / dropdown (if you added pages or groups by hand) survive every dashboard save, so the sub-editor and manual JSON edits coexist cleanly.