Hidden Pages

Sometimes you need a page to be accessible by URL but invisible in the sidebar. Holocron supports hiding at both the page and group level.

Hidden pages via frontmatter

Set hidden: true in the page's frontmatter:

1234---
title: Internal API Reference
hidden: true
---

The page is still rendered and accessible at its URL, but it does not appear in the sidebar navigation. Hidden pages are also excluded from the sitemap and emitted with robots=noindex.

Hidden groups

Set hidden: true on a group in docs.json:

12345{
  "group": "Internal",
  "hidden": true,
  "pages": ["internal/debug", "internal/metrics"]
}

All pages in the group are accessible by URL but the group is hidden from the sidebar.

Hidden tabs

Tabs also support hidden: true:

1234567{
  "tab": "Beta",
  "hidden": true,
  "groups": [
    { "group": "Beta Features", "pages": ["beta/feature-x"] }
  ]
}

Hidden tabs behave differently from hidden pages:

Behavior	Hidden page (`frontmatter`)	Hidden tab
Visible in sidebar	No	No
Visible in tab bar	N/A	No
Accessible by URL	Yes	Yes
In sitemap.xml	No	Yes
In llms.txt	No	Yes
`robots: noindex`	Yes	No

Hidden pages are excluded from search engine indexing. Hidden tabs keep all their pages fully indexed; only the UI navigation is removed. This makes hidden tabs the right choice when you want content discoverable by search engines but not shown in the site navigation.

SEO-only content

Use hidden tabs to publish SEO content that search engines can index without cluttering navigation. This is useful for programmatically generated pages, keyword-targeted landing pages, or AI-generated content:

123456789101112131415161718192021{
  "navigation": {
    "tabs": [
      { "tab": "Docs", "groups": [...] },
      {
        "tab": "SEO",
        "hidden": true,
        "groups": [
          {
            "group": "Topics",
            "pages": [
              "seo/how-to-authenticate",
              "seo/best-practices",
              "seo/troubleshooting-errors"
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Pages in the hidden tab are rendered at their normal URLs, included in sitemap.xml and llms.txt, and indexed by search engines. Users who land on these pages via search can still navigate the site normally; the tab just does not appear in the tab bar or sidebar.

Use cases

SEO content that search engines should index but does not belong in the main navigation
Internal pages that are linked from external tools but should not clutter the sidebar
Beta documentation shared via direct link before it is publicly visible
Legacy pages kept alive for old bookmarks without promoting them in navigation