Docusaurus with API plugins is too much setup

Yeah — Docusaurus + API plugins can feel like overkill if all you want is a simple docs site.

If the main pain is setup complexity, a few lighter options are worth considering:

Simpler alternatives

• GitHub Pages + Markdown

  • Lowest setup
  • Good for small docs
  • Less polish, but easy to maintain

• VitePress

  • Much lighter than Docusaurus
  • Great Markdown support
  • Fast to set up and customize

• Nextra

  • Very easy if you’re already in the Next.js ecosystem
  • Good docs/blog hybrid
  • Less config-heavy

• MkDocs

  • Especially nice for technical docs
  • Simple Python-based setup
  • Great navigation structure out of the box

If you want to stay on Docusaurus

You can also avoid most of the complexity by:

• skipping API docs plugins entirely
• using plain Markdown/MDX docs only
• generating API docs separately and linking to them

Practical recommendation

If your docs are mostly:

• guides
• tutorials
• reference pages

then VitePress is often the sweet spot: much less setup, still modern, and good enough for most doc sites.

If you want, I can help you choose the best tool based on:

1. your framework/language,
2. whether you need API docs,
3. how much customization you want.