Private pages and sections

A guide can stay public while some of its pages, a whole group, or a section inside a page are for some readers only: your own team, the people at one customer (by email address or email domain), or partners with a password. Everyone else sees a lock with the way in. Private pages are free on every guide, with no plan to upgrade.

Each private page or section names a rule. A guide has these kinds:

Team members open every private page and section, whatever its rule. A rule's name is what readers see on the lock ("Only people at Northwind can open it"), so name a customer rule after the customer.

Rules live in the guide's Settings › Private pages. Only Guides admins add and change them.

1. Under Who can open private pages, choose People or domains or Password.
2. Give it the name readers will see, like Northwind or Partners.
3. For people: type their email addresses and @domains, one per line or separated by commas. For a password: type it (at least 6 characters).
4. Choose whether its pages are listed in the navigation, with a lock (everyone sees the titles, only allowed readers open them) or hidden (left out of the navigation; share the link with the people it's for). People rules start listed, password rules hidden.

Who a rule lets in changes within a minute, without a publish: add someone and they can sign in; remove a person or a domain and their next page load is locked. A public email provider (gmail.com, outlook.com and the like) can't be a domain: list those people one by one.

Open the page in the editor, choose the Page tab and pick Who can open this page:

• Inherit: its group's rule, if the group has one, else everyone who can read the guide.
• Public: anyone, even inside a private group.
• One of the guide's rules.

The page tree marks private pages so you can see them at a glance. In Markdown mode the same choice is the page's access: frontmatter key (access: northwind).

A whole group: in Settings › Private pages › Groups, pick a rule for a sidebar group. Every page in it gets that rule unless the page sets its own.

Which pages are private reaches readers when you publish, like any other edit.

Type / in the editor and choose Private section. Pick who can see it, add an optional title (readers without access see it on the lock), and write the section inside.

In Markdown it is a directive, like the other blocks:

:::private[Northwind tenant values]{access="northwind"}
## Northwind tenant values

Use the entity id `urn:acme:northwind-prod-4471`.
:::

Without access, the section is for the team. A page can have private sections for up to three different rules.

Readers who can open it see the section marked as private; everyone else sees a lock card in its place, with Sign in with email, Sign in or Enter password.

A reader who opens a private page they can't read gets the guide's lock page, in its colours and logo:

• Specific people: a work-email box. If the address may open the page, a sign-in link arrives by email; it works once, for 15 minutes, and can be opened on another device (a phone's mail app, say). The answer is the same for any address, so nobody learns who is on a list.
• Team: Sign in with Markdrop.
• Password: a password box.
• Request access: an email and a note for the team (see Access requests).

Readers stay signed in on that browser for 7 days. Sign out every reader (Settings › Private pages) signs everyone out at once, for when a link or a password was shared too widely. A new password locks out everyone who used the old one.

When a reader asks for access from a lock page, the guide's admins get an email and the request appears under Settings › Private pages › Access requests, with the reader's email, note and the page they were on.

• Approve adds their email to the rule (for a people rule) and emails them that they can sign in.
• Decline emails them that it wasn't approved.

For a team page, approving means inviting them under People; for a password page, sending them the password yourself.

Access history lists every change to who can read private pages: rules created and changed (with the addresses added and removed), requests answered, and sign-outs, with who did it and when.

Preview as shows every private page and section, and whether a reader opens it: a public reader, a team member, a specific email address, or someone who knows a password. It reads your drafts, so you can check before you publish.

The same screen, and the Publish screen, warn you when:

• a public page links to a private one (readers who can't open it meet a lock);
• a page names a rule that doesn't exist (it stays locked for everyone until you pick another).

A private page or section is left out of everything readers and machines can get without signing in:

• the page itself, its Markdown version (.md), its preview card image, and the data the site loads when you click between pages;
• site search, llms.txt, llms-full.txt, skill.md and the sitemap;
• the guide's MCP server and its changelog feeds;
• previous and next links and the home page's cards;
• images and files that only private content uses;
• Ask AI: a signed-out reader's questions are answered from the public guide only; a signed-in reader's also from the private pages and sections they can open.

Every publish checks this: if any text of a private page or section would reach something a signed-out reader can fetch, the publish stops and says where.

A private page's address and its rule's name are not secret: a reader who guesses the address sees the lock and the rule's name, not the page. A page listed in the navigation shows its title to everyone. Hide it from the navigation when the title itself is private.

Readers and access still decides who can read the guide at all. In a password or members-only guide, private pages add a second rule on top: a reader needs both. A page can't be made public in a private guide.