About dbt docs commands

dbt docs has two supported subcommands: generate and serve.

dbt docs generate

The command is responsible for generating your project's documentation website by

1. copying the website index.html file into the target/ directory
2. compiling the project to target/manifest.json
3. producing the target/catalog.json file, which contains metadata about the tables and views produced by the models in your project.

Example:

dbt docs generate

Use the --no-compile argument to skip re-compilation. When this flag is provided, dbt docs generate will only execute steps (1) and (3), as described above.

Example:

dbt docs generate --no-compile

dbt docs serve

This command starts a webserver on port 8080 to serve your documentation locally and opens the documentation site in your default browser. The webserver is rooted in your target/ directory. Be sure to run dbt docs generate before dbt docs serve because the generate command produces a catalog metadata artifact that the serve command depends upon. You will see an error message if the catalog is missing.

Usage:

dbt docs serve [--profiles-dir PROFILES_DIR]
               [--profile PROFILE] [--target TARGET]
               [--port PORT]
               [--no-browser]

You may specify a different port using the --port flag.

Example:

dbt docs serve --port 8001