What it costs
Which commands call an LLM, which are free, and how to measure your own spend.
Most tools in this space are vague about cost. Here is the whole picture.
Free forever
These commands never call an LLM. Run them as often as you like.
| Command | |
|---|---|
deepdoc serve | Rebuilds the site from your saved plan |
deepdoc deploy | Builds static output |
deepdoc status | Reads local state |
deepdoc config | Reads and writes YAML |
deepdoc performance | Reads a local log |
deepdoc clean | Deletes files |
deepdoc init | Writes a config file |
Every theming change is in this list. Colours, presets, fonts, logo,
sidebar order, renaming pages, hiding pages, adding your own — all rebuilt from
.deepdoc/plan.json, none of it re-reads your code.
This is the point of the saved plan
The plan records your documentation structure. Because it persists, changing how the docs look never re-derives what they say. Iterate on the design as much as you want.
What costs money
Two commands.
deepdoc generate
The full run. Roughly:
consistency_pass: false.So the dominant term is pages, not repository size directly. A repo that plans to 40 pages costs roughly 40 generation calls plus planning overhead.
A page that fails validation is retried, up to MAX_RETRIES of 3. Most pages
never retry; a page that does costs 2–3× that page.
deepdoc update
The same machinery, but only for pages affected by your diff. Change one module and you pay for the handful of pages that describe it, not all 40.
This is why update is the normal command after your first generate.
Measuring your own
Do not trust an estimate — including one from these docs. Measure it:
deepdoc performanceThat reads .deepdoc/performance/runs.jsonl, which records per-run timings,
token counts and retries. The token counts there are the real numbers for your
repository and your model, which is the only figure that matters.
Why there are no dollar figures here
Cost depends on your model, your repository size, and how many pages your code plans into. Any number quoted here would be wrong for most readers. The measurement above takes seconds and is accurate for you.