Bundled plugins¶

Pixel Lab includes three optional build-time plugins. They require no additional package, and none is automatically enabled by selecting the theme. Keep Search in the plugin list if your site uses it.

Page metadata¶

pixel-lab/metadata generates missing titles and descriptions from page content. See Page metadata for setup and fallback rules.

Sitemap modification dates¶

site_url: https://example.com/docs/
plugins:
  - search
  - pixel-lab/git-lastmod

Sets each Markdown page's sitemap lastmod from its last committed Git change. MkDocs still generates sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz using site_url.

Git and complete repository history are required. In GitHub Actions, use a checkout with full history:

- uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0

Dates use committer timestamps. Unrelated commits and rebuilds don't change them; local uncommitted edits and front-matter dates don't override them. Renamed files use their history.

Untracked or generated pages, files outside the documentation repository, missing history, and shallow clones omit lastmod rather than pretending the page changed today. Without this plugin, MkDocs' normal sitemap dates are preserved and Pixel Lab doesn't run Git commands.

Robots.txt¶

site_url: https://example.com/
plugins:
  - search
  - pixel-lab/robots

Generates a permissive robots.txt with a sitemap URL derived from site_url:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

To customize the rules, add docs/robots.txt. Your file takes priority and is copied unchanged. Without site_url, the generated sitemap directive is omitted. Without the plugin, Pixel Lab doesn't generate robots.txt.

Crawlers consult robots rules at the domain root. For project-path hosting, such as example.com/project/, the hosting owner must incorporate these rules at example.com/robots.txt. Robots rules aren't access control.