A suite of tools for exploring Go API documentation.

It ships with:

• godoc-cli – ✨ a richly rendered terminal viewer for Go docs.
• godoc-mcp – 🤖 an MCP server that lets AI tooling fetch Go docs on demand.
• go.dw1.io/godoc – 📦 the library powering both binaries, so you can embed doc loading in your own apps.

Install the godoc CLI and godoc MCP from source:

go install go.dw1.io/godoc/cmd/godoc-{cli,mcp}@latest

The binaries will be placed in $GOBIN (or $GOPATH/bin if unset).

For library, see library section.

godoc-cli renders Go documentation with Glamour for syntax-aware Markdown output. It understands modules, respects GOOS/GOARCH, and can emit JSON when you need structured data.

The binary is called godoc-cli to sidestep naming clashes with the golang.org/x/tools/cmd/godoc tool.

godoc-cli [options]
godoc-cli [options] <pkg>
godoc-cli [options] <sym>[.<methodOrField>]
godoc-cli [options] [<pkg>.]<sym>[.<methodOrField>]
godoc-cli [options] [<pkg>.][<sym>.]<methodOrField>
godoc-cli [options] <pkg> <sym>[.<methodOrField>]

Options

godoc detects terminal width and theme when -style=auto. When stdout isn’t a TTY (e.g., piping to a file), it falls back to a minimal renderer so you can feed the output into other tools.

Use these commands to explore docs quickly.

Docs for the current module

godoc-cli

Remote package browsing

godoc-cli github.com/gorilla/mux

Symbol lookup

godoc-cli net/http Request.ParseForm
godoc-cli fmt.Println
godoc-cli net/http.StatusOK

Version pinning

godoc-cli -version v1.8.0 github.com/gorilla/mux

JSON output

godoc-cli -json fmt.Printf | jq

Interactive pager

godoc-cli -pager net/http Request

Platform-specific APIs

godoc-cli -goos windows -goarch arm64 runtime

godoc-mcp wraps the same engine in an MCP server so assistants like Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any other AI apps can serve Go docs inside a conversation.

Launches an MCP server over STDIO:

godoc-mcp

The server registers one tool: load.

Calls return the raw godoc.Result (either PackageDoc or SymbolDoc) plus the request metadata (import_path, selector, version). See the library section below for schema details.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "memory": {
      "command": "/path/to/go/bin/godoc-mcp"
    }
  }
}

After saving, restart your MCP host.

The library powers both binaries and is available for embedding in servers, CLIs, or automation. It can load package docs, symbols, and methods from local modules or remote sources, with optional version pinning and cross-compilation.

go get go.dw1.io/godoc

package main

import (
    "context"
    "fmt"
    "time"

    "go.dw1.io/godoc"
)

func main() {
    g := godoc.New(
        godoc.WithGOOS("linux"),
        godoc.WithGOARCH("amd64"),
        godoc.WithContext(context.Background()),
    )

    result, err := g.Load("fmt", "Printf", "")
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }

    fmt.Println(result.Text())

    ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 200*time.Millisecond)
    defer cancel()

    g = godoc.New(godoc.WithContext(ctx))
    _, _ = g.Load("github.com/gorilla/mux", "", "latest")
}

Load(importPath, sel, version string) (Result, error)

• importPath: package import path (e.g., fmt, net/http, github.com/user/repo, .)
• sel: symbol selector (Printf, Request.ParseForm, …); leave empty for the whole package
• version: module version (v1.2.3, latest); leave empty for the default version

The returned Result implements Text(), HTML(), and MarshalJSON().

type PackageDoc struct {
    ImportPath string     `json:"import_path"`
    Name       string     `json:"name"`
    Synopsis   string     `json:"synopsis"`
    DocText    string     `json:"doc"`
    Consts     []ValueDoc `json:"consts"`
    Vars       []ValueDoc `json:"vars"`
    Funcs      []FuncDoc  `json:"funcs"`
    Types      []TypeDoc  `json:"types"`
}

type SymbolDoc struct {
    ImportPath string    `json:"import_path"`
    Package    string    `json:"package"`
    Kind       string    `json:"kind"`
    Name       string    `json:"name"`
    Receiver   string    `json:"receiver"`
    Args       []ArgInfo `json:"args"`
    DocText    string    `json:"doc"`
}

Use the higher-level convenience methods or marshal to JSON to feed docs into other systems.

There are no guarantees of stability for the APIs in this library.

Go ahead.

The entire project (CLI, MCP server, and library) is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.