Cool Starter is a VuePress boilerplate that scaffolds documentation sites on the vuepress-theme-cool theme, bundling Markdown extensions for admonitions, charts, math, and diagrams.
What is Cool Starter?
Cool Starter is a VuePress boilerplate repository that scaffolds a documentation website using the third-party theme vuepress-theme-cool. The template takes VuePress configuration and Markdown content as input and outputs a static site with a homepage featuring three highlight cards: Admonitions and Tables, Charts and Math, and Diagramming tools. It was created by David Li and is distributed under the MIT License.
Key Features
- Admonitions and Tables — The theme supports callout-style admonitions rendered with Google Material icons, plus sortable tables for data-heavy documentation.
- Charts and Math — Integrates Chart.js for interactive charts and KaTeX for mathematical typesetting in Markdown.
- Diagramming tools — Bundles Mermaid and PlantUML so you can embed sequence diagrams, flowcharts, and UML diagrams directly in docs.
- Automatic navigation — The optional config-other.js provides automatic navbar and sidebar generation from your document structure.
- VuePress foundation — Built on VuePress 1.x, so it inherits Vue single-file components and the Markdown-based document workflow.
Who is it for?
Technical writers who want a ready-made VuePress theme with interactive documentation elements benefit from a preconfigured starter. Developers building project docs for open-source libraries can use the boilerplate to skip theme setup and focus on writing content. Teams that need math-heavy or diagram-heavy internal documentation get KaTeX and Mermaid/PlantUML support out of the box.
What can you do with Cool Starter?
- Project maintainers: Publish API references with sortable tables and chart visualizations.
- Educators: Write lesson pages containing KaTeX formulas and Mermaid flowcharts.
- Technical writers: Set up a docs site with admonition callouts for tips, warnings, and notes.
How does Cool Starter work?
Install dependencies with npm install, add VuePress as a dev dependency with npm install vuepress --save-dev, then run npm run docs:dev to start the development server. Customization happens in config.js, while config-other.js offers an automatic navigation setup.
Pricing
Cool Starter is free and open source under the MIT License, meaning you can use and modify it without licensing fees.
FAQ
Does Cool Starter work with a globally installed VuePress?
The README includes a disclaimer that as of vuepress version 1.7.1, the starter may throw an error when VuePress is installed globally. The supported path is to install VuePress locally as a dev dependency.
What Markdown extensions are included?
The theme adds support for admonitions (using Google Material icons), sortable tables, Chart.js charts, KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, and PlantUML diagrams. These are enabled by default in the theme.
How do I customize the site?
Most customization is done through config.js, including theme options and site metadata. The separate config-other.js enables automatic navbar and sidebar generation from your doc structure.
Who maintains Cool Starter?
The project is maintained by David Li and is part of the vuepress-theme-cool repository. It is licensed under the MIT License.
