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How-To: Preview Docs Locally

Goal: Preview the MkDocs site with live reload before you commit doc changes. Prerequisites: Dev dependencies installed (see Contributing), port 8000 free.

Use this workflow to verify formatting, navigation, and contrast before you push docs updates.

Steps

  1. Start the dev server from the repo root:
uv run mkdocs serve --dev-addr localhost:8000

Actual output from 2026-01-14T14:24:19Z: 

INFO    -  Building documentation...
INFO    -  Cleaning site directory
INFO    -  Documentation built in 1.06 seconds
INFO    -  [15:24:26] Serving on http://localhost:8000/docs-mcp-server/

  1. Open the site in your browser: http://localhost:8000/docs-mcp-server/

  2. Edit a doc (for example, docs/index.md) and confirm the page reloads.

Verification

You should see the docs home page and the navigation update when you edit files.

Troubleshooting

Symptom: OSError: [Errno 98] Address already in use

Fix: Stop the running server or use a different port (for example, --dev-addr 127.0.0.1:8001).

Actual output from 2026-01-14T14:19:23Z (stack trace omitted; exit code printed at end): 

INFO    -  Documentation built in 1.02 seconds
OSError: [Errno 98] Address already in use
1