# carta

> The semantic reference for Unix documentation: man pages from Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and macOS, parsed into structured data, with which releases shipped which text.

Every page is HTML at its URL, Markdown with `.md` and JSON with `.json`. URLs are names at the root. The Markdown opens with the page's provenance as front matter, and its references link to other pages' Markdown. The JSON holds the parser's document and, for commands on several platforms, the comparison of their options.

## Pages

- [A name's page](https://new.carta.tech/tar.md): `/<name>` is the name's lead section, the one most platforms have; `/<name>.md` and `/<name>.json`.
- [A section's page](https://new.carta.tech/printf/3.json): `/<name>/<section>`, with `.md` and `.json`. `/<name>.<section>` moves there.
- [Another platform's page](https://new.carta.tech/tar/1/freebsd.md): `/<name>/<section>/<platform>`, where the platform is `linux` (the default), `freebsd`, `openbsd` or `macos`.
- [One option](https://new.carta.tech/tar/1/option/-z.md): `/<name>/<section>/option/<flag>.md` and `/<name>/<section>/<platform>/option/<flag>.md`, by any of the option's spellings, with how the other platforms differ.

## Tools

- [Check a command line](https://new.carta.tech/check?cmd=tar%20-xzf%20a.tgz): JSON saying, for each platform's newest page of the command, which flags the page lists and which it doesn't.
- [MCP](https://new.carta.tech/mcp): a stateless MCP server (streamable HTTP, JSON responses) with the tools `page`, `option`, `search`, `check` and `pin`, over the same pages and answers as these URLs.
- [Search](https://new.carta.tech/search?q=compress%20archive): names, summaries and flags; a query naming a page exactly (`tar`, `printf 3`, `tar -z`) goes to it.

## Indexes

- [Sections](https://new.carta.tech/sections): every section's names by letter.
- [Packages](https://new.carta.tech/packages): the packages pages come from.
- [Sitemap](https://new.carta.tech/sitemap.xml): every page once, at its canonical URL.