Elastic Docs contribution guide

Welcome, contributor!

Whether you're a technical writer or you've only edited Elastic docs once or twice, you're a valued contributor. Every word matters!

In April 2025, we released our new documentation site. This site includes documentation for our latest product versions, including Elastic Stack 9.0+ and Elastic Cloud Serverless.

Because the new documentation site only hosts documentation for newer releases, the way that you contribute depends on the version that you want to document.

For a list of versions covered on elastic.co/docs, refer to Find docs for your product version. Versions prior to the versions listed on that page are documented on our legacy system, elastic.co/guide.

elastic.co/docs uses our new build system, also known as "Docs V3", which uses an extended version of markdown as its markup language. Refer to our syntax guide to learn more.

Docs for Elastic Stack 9.x, Elastic Cloud Enterprise 4.x, and Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes 3.x can all be found on this site. All unversioned products, such as Elastic Cloud Hosted and Elastic Cloud Serverless, are also documented on elastic.co/docs.

This documentation is cumulative. This means that a new set of docs is not published for every minor release. Instead, each page stays valid over time and incorporates version-specific changes directly within the content. Learn how to write cumulative documentation.

• For simple bug fixes and enhancements: Contribute on the web
• For complex or multi-page updates: Contribute locally

In Docs V3, a single branch is published per repository. This branch is set to main by default, but it is possible to instead publish a different branch by changing your repository's deployment model. You might want to change your deployment model so you can have more control over when content added for a specific release is published.

Learn more about branching strategies.

To contribute to elastic.co/guide, you must work with our legacy documentation build system. This system uses ASCIIDoc as its markup language.

Docs for Elastic Stack 8.x, Elastic Cloud Enterprise 3.x, and Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes 2.x can all be found on this site.

• For simple bug fixes and enhancements: Contribute on the web
• For complex or multi-page updates: See the legacy documentation build guide

• For documentation problems: Open a docs issue or Fix it myself. You can open sensitive issues in our internal repo.
• For build tool (docs-builder) problems: Open a bug report

• Make the documentation better: Open a docs issue. Elastic employees can open sensitive issues in our internal repo.
• Make our build tool (docs-builder) better: Start a docs-builder discussion

That sounds great! See development to learn how to contribute to our documentation build system.