Editor settings for AI and publishing
Configure editor appearance, AI instructions, and publishing defaults to control how the Mintlify web editor looks and how it commits and merges changes.
The editor settings page controls the appearance, publishing behavior, and agent behavior.
- Appearance: Personal preferences for how the editor looks and behaves. These apply only to you.
- Publishing: Deployment-wide defaults for how the editor commits changes and opens pull requests. These apply to everyone who publishes. Only admins can update publishing behavior.
- Chat: Persistent instructions for the editor’s AI agent.
- Danger zone: Actions that can’t be undone.
Appearance
Appearance settings are personal preferences. They change the editor only for you and don’t affect teammates or your published site. All appearance settings are off by default.
- Fit editor to full width: Stretch the editing canvas edge-to-edge instead of the default 768px column.
- Show breadcrumbs: Show the page’s location in the site navigation above the editing canvas.
- Open live preview in new tab: When previewing, open the rendered page in a new browser tab.
PR merge method
Choose how the editor merges pull requests when you click Merge and publish:
- Merge: Creates a merge commit that preserves the full branch history. This is the default.
- Squash: Combines all commits in the branch into a single commit on your deployment branch.
- Rebase: Replays each commit from the branch onto your deployment branch without a merge commit.
Match your merge method to your Git provider’s branch protection settings. If your deployment branch only allows squash merges, set the method to Squash to avoid failed merges from the editor.
Auto publish
Auto publish commits changes on your deployment branch automatically, shortly after you stop editing. If you turn on this setting, the editor hides branches and the publish step for everyone on your site. Auto publish is off by default.
With auto publish on, there is no pending state and no chance to review. Every edit reaches your live site shortly after you stop typing.
Create draft pull requests by default
When this setting is on, pull requests created from the editor open as drafts, including the pull request that opens after the first commit on a new branch. Authors click Request review to mark them ready when they finish editing. This setting is on by default.
If you want editor pull requests to open ready for review immediately, turn off draft pull requests.
Granular publishing
Granular publishing controls which pending changes the Publish menu shows on your deployment branch.
- Off (default): The Publish menu shows and publishes only your own changes. Changes that only teammates made are hidden.
- On: The Publish menu shows everyone’s pending changes, split into Your changes and Modified by others, with a checkbox on each change so you can choose what to publish.
This setting only takes effect while you work on your deployment branch and that branch has no branch protections. See Publish specific changes for more information.
PR instructions
PR instructions guide the AI when it generates a pull request title and description. They apply whenever the editor generates a pull request description on your behalf.
Use PR instructions to standardize what reviewers see, for example:
- Required sections like Summary and Changes.
- A description template that links to a tracking system.
- Tone or length requirements for titles.
Example:
Title: imperative mood, under 70 characters, no trailing period.
Description: include a "## Summary" section (one sentence) and a
"## Changes" section as a bulleted list. Link any referenced page
using its relative path.Instructions are limited to 20,000 characters.
AI instructions
AI instructions are persistent guidance that the editor sends to the AI alongside your request. Use them to capture style and tone rules you don’t want to repeat every time, like voice, terminology, or formatting conventions.
Your instructions apply to:
- Ask AI prompts, which you open by pressing Space on an empty line.
- Agent sessions started from the editor.
Each teammate maintains their own instructions, scoped to their user account. Instructions are limited to 20,000 characters.
Add AI instructions when you find yourself repeating the same guidance in prompts, for example:
- Enforcing second-person voice or sentence case headings.
- Preferring specific product names or terminology.
- Banning marketing language or filler phrases.
- Requiring certain components, like always using
<Note>for callouts.
Keep instructions short and specific. The AI follows them on every request, so vague or contradictory rules degrade results.
Example:
- Use second person ("you") and active voice.
- Use sentence case for all headings.
- Refer to the product as "Acme"—never "Acme Inc." or "the platform".
- Wrap notes and warnings in <Note> or <Warning> components.
- Do not add introductory filler like "In this guide" or "Let's explore".Leave the field empty to remove your instructions.
Reset editor
Reset editor forces the editor to discard its local state and sync with your Git repository. After you confirm, the editor reloads. Only admins can reset the editor. Reset the editor if it gets stuck out of sync with your repo, for example if the file tree is empty or shows errors like Unable to find docs.json. This can happen even though the file exists on your deployment branch and your live site builds normally.
If you reset the editor, you discard any unpublished changes that you haven’t committed to Git. If you have pending edits you want to keep, publish them first.