An overview of Pattern Library Generators

Pattern Libraries (or Style Guides) are a helpful tool in developing websites. Read more about Creating Style Guides at this A List Apart article.

Maintaining a static Pattern Library (in HTML/CSS) is hard work and errorprone. There are, however, various tools that help us generate a dynamic Pattern Library or 'Living Style Guide'.

This page aims to list these tools. If you know of other tools or have other feedback, please let me know or submit a PR. Thanks, David Hund @valuedstandards

NOTE: This should list generators only: no Bootstrap, Foundation, Topcoat, etc. but tools to generate a Living Style Guide.

Table of Contents

Multiple
PHP
Python / Flask
Ruby / RAILS
ReactJS
VueJs
NodeJS
Jekyll
Angular
CSS (parsing CSS source)
Grunt / Gulp Tasks
Online Services
Other
Articles

Multiple

Storybook

The UI development environment you'll love to use.

Storybook is a UI development environment for your UI components. With it, you can visualize different states of your UI components and develop them interactively. Then generate a static styleguide to host anywhere.

Demos Docs Source | React, React-Native, Preact, Vue, Angular, Polymer, Webcomponents, HTML*

PHP

Pattern Primer

Generating styled markup from a folder of markup snippets.

Demo | Source | PHP, HTML patterns

Pattern Lab

Pattern Lab is a collection of tools to help you create atomic design systems.

Demo | Source | PHP, Atomic, Static Generator, Grunt Task

Drupal Project Styleguide

Provides a visual testing page for Drupal themes.

Demo | Source | PHP, Drupal

Style Guide Boilerplate

A starting point for crafting living style guides.

Demo | Source | PHP, HTML patterns

Style Guide Boilerplate Bootstrap Edition

A starting point for crafting living style guides for Bootstrap-based projects.

Demo | Source | PHP, HTML patterns, Bootstrap

Barebones

An initial directory setup, style guide and pattern primer. Intended as a starting point for […] projects…

Demo | Source | PHP, HTML patterns

atomicdocs

Atomic Docs is a front end style guide generator and Scss/Less/Stylus partial manager. Atomic Docs is built in PHP and Sass.

Demo | Source | PHP, Atomic, HTML patterns

Python / Flask

Flask-Styleguide

A living style guide for your Flask application.

Demo | Source | Documentation | Python, Flask, KSS

Ruby / RAILS

Pattern Primer on Ruby

Source | Ruby, HTML patterns

Living Style Guide

The easiest way to create front-end style guides with Sass and Compass

Demo | Open source demo | Source | Ruby, Markdown, Sass

Mountain View

Source | Ruby, Rails, Components

Catalog lets you create beautiful living and fully interactive style guides using Markdown and React components.

Source | Demo React, NodeJS, CLI, Markdown, components

React Showroom

React components catalog with live examples and documenting using markdown

Source | Demo React, Markdown, components

Vue

Vue Styleguidist

Demo | Source | Vue, Markdown, components

NodeJS

Stylemark

A living style guide generator for everything—CSS, JS, React, Angular, and more.

Demo | Source | Static Site Generator, NodeJS, Markdown, React, Angular, Ember, CSS, LESS, SASS

DocumentCSS

Create a live style guide that can easily expand into a documentation hub. Store all kinds of documentation, from design rationale, to CSS, JS, and API docs.

Demo | Source | NodeJS, Markdown, Custom Tags, Static Site Generator

Source JS

Front-end documentation engine

Demo | Source | NodeJS, Grunt, RequireJS, LESS

Tapestry App

A free app that gives you an interface to store and manage your front-end patterns.

Demo | Source | NodeJS, Gulp, Angular, Markdown/YAML

Team-Sass / generator-style-prototype

Yeoman Generator for Style Prototypes

Source | NodeJS, Yeoman, Ruby, Git

patternplate is a platform designed to help you create and maintain component libraries.

Source | NodeJS, React (jsx) patterns, LESS

Fabricator

A tool for building website UI toolkits

Demo | Source | NodeJS, Gulp, Markdown, Static Site Generator, Mustache patterns

Component Styleguide

Simple styleguide framework

Demo | Source | NodeJS, HTML & Handlebars patterns

Fractal

A tool to help you build and document web component libraries and then integrate them into your projects. By default, Fractal uses Handlebars to render so called view templates, but you are free to use a different template engine.

Source | NodeJS, Markdown, Handlebars

Astrum

A lightweight, non-opinionated, pattern library designed to be included with any web project.

Source | NodeJS, CLI, Markdown

Swanky Docs

A simple, flexible and powerful ecosystem for creating beautiful documentation.

Source | NodeJS, CLI, Markdown

Component Library

An easy way to create HTML styleguide for a web project.

Source | Demo | NodeJS, HTML, Static Site Generator

Drizzle

A streamlined tool for developing, documenting and presenting UI pattern libraries.

Source | Demo | NodeJS, Gulp, Handlebards, Static Site Generator

UIengine

The UIengine is a tool for developers, designers and product owners to create, document and evolve a design system collaboratively. It generates your design system documentation (i.e. pattern library, styleguide or brand manual) and brings the tools to implement the design system in your web site or application.

Source | NodeJS, Gulp, CLI, Markdown, YAML, Templating agnostic (Pug, React/JSX, Handlebars, …)

Fepper

Easily integrate your pattern library into your web application! Or even just output a static site!

Source | NodeJS, Prototype to Webapp Interface, Static Site Generator, Mustache/Feplet

Malvid

Developing components. The right way. Generate an interactive UI to develop, preview and document web components.

Source | NodeJS, EJS, Twig, Nunjucks, Babel

Jekyll

Jekyll Styleguide

Using Jekyll Styleguide you can generate a Pattern Library and add patterns by simply adding new files to the _posts folder. Includes a GulpJS workflow that compiles Sass auto-builds Jekyll and refreshes your browser :)

Demo | Source | Jekyll, Static Site Generator, Markdown, Gulp

Pattern Primer on Jekyll

Source | Jekyll, Static Site Generator

Angular

UI-jar

Test Driven Style Guide Development - Angular (2.x and above). A drop in module to automatically create a living style guide based on the test you write for your components. Bundle with your favorite build tool and you will automatically get a web app where you can view examples of each component together with associated documentation.

Source | Angular (2.x and above), Test Driven Style Guide Development

CSS (parsing CSS source)

These tools define a documenting syntax for CSS. You would e.g. write your components' HTML in a comment above the component's CSS and the tool would generate a Styleguide from it.

Knyle Style Sheets: KSS

KSS is intended to help automate the creation of a living styleguide. A styleguide serves as a place to publish KSS documentation and visualize different states of UI elements defined in your CSS.

Demo | Source | *CSS, Ruby

StyleDocco generates documentation and style guide documents from your stylesheets.

Source | *CSS, NodeJS, Markdown

DSS

DSS, Documented Style Sheets, is a comment styleguide and parser for CSS, LESS, STYLUS, SASS and SCSS code.

Source | *CSS, NodeJS, Grunt, Sublime Plugin

Hologram

Hologram is a Ruby gem that parses comments in your CSS and turns them into a beautiful style guide.

Demo | *CSS, Ruby, Markdown

Nucleus

Nucleus is a living style guide generator for atomic css based components.

Demo | *SCSS, NodeJS

Styleguide.js

Generate a styleguide from your CSS, by adding YAML data in the comments. It generates a self-contained html file. Works great for component based CSS.

Demo | Source | *CSS, NodeJS, Coffeescript, YAML

YSS

YSS is styleguide framework written in PHP and jQuery. It display nicely all your commented CSS […]

Demo | Source | CSS, PHP, jQuery, Markdown

postcss-style-guide

PostCSS plugin. CSS comments will be parsed through Markdown and displayed in a generated HTML document.

Source | CSS, NodeJS, GruntJS, GulpJS, Markdown

mdcss

PostCSS plugin. Easily create and maintain style guides with CSS comments using Markdown.

Demo | Source | CSS, PostCSS, NodeJS, GruntJS, GulpJS, Markdown

aigis

Aigis is a Node.js package that parses comments in your CSS and auto-generate a style guide. It is similar to Hologram, like a Node.js implementation of Hologram.

Demo | Source | CSS, NodeJS, GulpJS, Markdown

Styledown

Styledown is made to work in most web development setups. It doesn't favor any framework or language or any preprocessor.

Demo | Source | CSS, NodeJS, Markdown

markdown-styleguide-generator

Markdown-styleguide-generator will search all your style files (your .css, .scss _partial.scss, .less, .whatever) for comments and create a html file living style guide for your developers to use.

Source | CSS, Less, Markdown, NodeJS, Gulp, Grunt

Atlas-guide

Atlas will search comments in scss and regular markdown files and create html structure based on this. It comes with extensive styles monitoring and project reports. It is similar to Hologram.

Source | Demo | NodeJS, Mustache, Markdown, Static Site Generator

Grunt / Gulp Tasks

SC5 style guide generator

CLI, gulp/grunt task to create style guides from stylesheets using KSS notation.

Demo | Source | GruntJS, GulpJS, *CSS, NodeJS, KSS, Gulp, Grunt

Sassdown

Grunt plugin for building living styleguides with Handlebars from Markdown comments in CSS, SASS and LESS files.

Source | GruntJS, Handlebars, Markdown

PatternPack

Build and Document Your Interface. Then Share the Code.

Source | GruntJS, Markdown

Pattern Primer on Grunt

Demo | Source | GruntJS, HTML patterns

Devbridge Styleguide

Devbridge Styleguide helps you create, share, and automate a living visual style library of your brand. Share your digital brand standards, improve team collaboration, and implement an independent easily-extendable modular structure.

Demo | Source | NodeJS, GulpJS, GruntJS, Scss, Less, HTML patterns

Online Services

These services provide a web-app to generate your styleguide. Some require an account

Frontify Style Guide

You can create design, brand or UI guidelines with the Frontify Style Guide editor. Use existing templates or start from scratch by choosing from over 20 smart blocks (like colors, media, typography, UI elements, & more) - For Non-coders and coders =)

Service | Service, Login, Free (“Powered by Frontify”), Commercial ($9/$49)

Patternry

Service | Service, Login, (Commercial)

Runway

Go from stylesheet to styleguide, instantly. Runway parses comments in your CSS/SCSS and deploys a beautiful, shareable styleguide. Choose between multiple themes / syntax highlighting choices, and tweak your styleguide in realtime through an interactive editor.

Service | Service, Login, Free

Other

Simple style guide

A Simple style guide generator/template that uses handlebars and markdown syntax. This tool creates documentation for your already developed js and css files.

Source | Grunt, Markdown, highlightJs, Template, Sass, Static Site Generator

Stylify Me

Stylify Me extracts the styles of a given website and displays them in a styleguide

Demo | Extract, Example

North Generator Style Prototype

Yeoman Generator for Style Prototypes

Yeoman Generator | Templates, Sass, Compass, Yeoman, Grunt,Bower, Styletiles

Cheap and reliable Node.js hosting starts at $3/month, and $1/month static HTML hosting

davidhund / Styleguide Generators

Labels

Projects that are alternatives of or similar to Styleguide Generators

An overview of Pattern Library Generators

Multiple

Storybook

PHP

Python / Flask

Ruby / RAILS

React

Vue

NodeJS

Jekyll

Angular

CSS (parsing CSS source)

Grunt / Gulp Tasks

Online Services

Other

Articles