Quick Start

Push your first document to Outline in under 2 minutes.

Prerequisites

• An Outline instance (self-hosted or cloud)
• An API token (Settings → API in Outline)

1. Configure credentials

export OUTLINE_SERVER_URL=https://outline.example.com
export OUTLINE_API_TOKEN=sk-your-api-token

outline config set server_url https://outline.example.com
outline config set api_token sk-your-api-token  # stored in OS keyring

2. Push a single file

echo '# Hello World
This is my first doc pushed from the terminal.' > hello.md

outline push --collection-id "Engineering" --path hello.md

Output:

created "Hello World" in collection "Engineering"

3. Push a directory

outline push --collection-id "Engineering" --path ./docs/

All .md files are pushed. index.md and README.md become parent documents. Subdirectories become nested children.

4. Verify

Check your Outline instance — the documents are live!

What’s next?

• Authentication options — OIDC, API token, or basic auth
• Metadata headers — control title, collection, icon per file
• CI/CD integration — automate on every git push