Hidden pages

Some pages don't belong in the public sidebar — drafts, internal handbooks, deprecated guides you still need to link to. Hidden pages stay reachable by direct URL but disappear from navigation, search, your sitemap, and the AI context fed to LLMs.

Hide a single page

Add hidden: true to the page's frontmatter:

---
title: Internal handbook
hidden: true
---

The page renders normally when someone visits its URL, but Jamdesk:

Drops it from the sidebar
Adds <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow"> so search engines skip it
Excludes it from sitemap.xml, llms.txt, llms-full.txt, and on-site search

Hide a whole group or tab

Set "hidden": true on a group or tab in docs.json:

{
  "navigation": {
    "tabs": [
      {
        "tab": "Public",
        "groups": [{ "group": "Guides", "pages": ["intro", "quickstart"] }]
      },
      {
        "tab": "Internal",
        "hidden": true,
        "groups": [{ "group": "Runbooks", "pages": ["oncall", "postmortems"] }]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Every page under the hidden node inherits the rule. The same flag works on tabs, groups, anchors, dropdowns, products, languages, and versions.

Keep hidden pages in search

If you want a hidden tab or group out of the sidebar but still indexed for site search, AI answers, and the sitemap, add "searchable": true:

{
  "tab": "Internal",
  "hidden": true,
  "searchable": true,
  "groups": [{ "group": "Runbooks", "pages": ["oncall"] }]
}

Frontmatter hidden: true on a child page still wins — searchable only re-opens descendants that haven't opted out themselves.

Project-wide controls

Both flags live under seo in docs.json:

Flag	Default	Effect
`seo.indexing`	`"navigable"`	Only pages listed in your navigation appear in artifacts. Set to `"all"` to include every MDX file in your repo.
`seo.indexHiddenPages`	`false`	Set to `true` to include `hidden: true` pages in sitemap, llms.txt, and search, and drop the auto-noindex tag.

Example:

{
  "seo": {
    "indexing": "all"
  }
}

Quick reference

Scenario	Frontmatter	docs.json	Visible in sidebar	Direct URL	In sitemap
Normal page	—	listed	Yes	Yes	Yes
Hidden via frontmatter	`hidden: true`	listed	No	Yes	No
Page not in nav (orphan)	—	omitted	No	Yes	No
Hidden group	—	`hidden: true` on group	No	Yes	No
Hidden + searchable group	—	`hidden: true, searchable: true`	No	Yes	Yes
Project opts into indexing all	—	any	Same as above	Yes	Yes

When to use each

Drafts and previews — frontmatter hidden: true on individual pages
Internal sections for a small team — a hidden group or tab
Compliance docs that should be public but not promoted — hidden group with searchable: true
Full-repo indexing for AI grounding only — seo.indexing: "all"

Hidden pages aren't access control. Anyone who has the URL can read them. For real access control, see Password Protection.