> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docpad.bevry.me/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docpad.bevry.me/core/cli.md).

# Command Line Interface

* To discover what commands are available:

  ```bash
  docpad --help
  ```
* To create your website (if it doesn't already exist), watch for changes, and start the webserver, use:

  ```
  docpad run
  ```
* To just generate your website from one of the existing skeletons, use:

  ```
  docpad scaffold
  ```
* To just generate your compiled website, use:

  ```
  docpad generate
  ```
* To just watch your website for changes and re-generate whenever a change is made, use:

  ```
  docpad watch
  ```
* To just run the DocPad server to access your already generated website, use:

  ```
  docpad server
  ```
* To render standalone files with DocPad programmatically (will output to stdout)

  ```
  docpad render filePath
  ```

  For example, to render a markdown file and save the result to an output file, we would use:

  ```bash
  docpad render inputMarkdownFile.html.md > outputMarkdownFile.html
  ```
* To render stdin with DocPad programmatically (will output to stdout)

  ```bash
  echo $content | docpad render sampleFileNameWithExtensions
  ```

  For example, to render passed markdown content and save the result to a file, we would use:

  ```bash
  echo "**awesome**" | docpad render input.html.md > output.html
  ```

[<br>](https://docpad.org/docs/api)