remix-ide is Remix's documentation, not Remix IDE itself

Three repositories, one product, and the README says which is which

The first line of substance in the README is a clarification rather than an introduction: this repository contains only Remix's official Read the Docs documentation source code. The published result is the Remix IDE documentation site at remix-ide.readthedocs.io. The repository description agrees, reading simply Documentation for Remix IDE, and the homepage field points at the readthedocs address.

Because the name is ambiguous, the README does the reader a favour and lists all three Remix repositories in one table. Remix Docs is this repository, remix-ide on GitHub, rendered at remix-ide.readthedocs.io. Remix IDE is remix-project on GitHub, served at app.remix.live. Remix About page is remix-website, at remix.live. The desktop build is a fourth entry, remix-desktop, mentioned in the prose.

That distinction matters more than it first appears. At 2,352 stars and 960 forks, this is the most-forked repository in the Remix organisation, and a fork of it gets you documentation text and a theme, not a Solidity IDE. The metadata records no detected programming language, which is consistent with a repository whose only code is documentation configuration. The repository was last pushed on 2026-09-25 and is not archived.

Running the docs locally in two commands

The README's local setup section is short enough to quote in full, which is what you want from a docs repository. Clone, move into the `docs` directory, and run the Makefile target:

git clone https://github.com/remix-project-org/remix-ide

make run

The `cd docs` step between them is described in prose rather than in the fence, so it is easy to skip and then wonder why `make` reports no targets. In practice the sequence is a clone, a `cd` into `docs`, and then `make run`.

The tree confirms this is a Sphinx project with the supporting files you would expect. There is `.readthedocs.yaml` for the hosting configuration, `docs/` for the content and the `conf.py`, a `styles/` directory at the root, plus linting and translation infrastructure: `vale.ini`, `.custom_wordlist.txt`, `.pymarkdown.json`, `crowdin.yml` and `translation.md`. The screenshot asset `remix_screenshot.jpg` and `favicon.ico` live at the root as well, which is a small sign that site-level assets were never fully moved under `docs/`.

Seven custom files override the Read the Docs theme

The most technically substantive part of the repository is the theming section, and it is documented properly. The docs are built with Sphinx using the Read the Docs theme as a base, customized with CSS overrides and JavaScript layered on top. The exact file list is declared in `conf.py`:

html_js_files = [
    "js/constants.js",
    "js/utils.js",
    "js/loaders.js",
    "js/initialize.js"
]

html_css_files = ["css/fonts.css", "css/tokens.css", "css/custom.css"]

The README then explains what each file under `docs/_static/` does, which is the kind of table most projects skip. `constants.js` holds the JavaScript constants used across the other scripts. `utils.js` holds the utility and helper functions. `loaders.js` carries the primary logic for the loading scripts, organized by `initialize.js`. `initialize.js` holds the high-level script logic and declares the order in which the loader functions run during `onDOMContentLoaded`. On the CSS side, `fonts.css` has the font imports and declarations, `tokens.css` holds the theming variables and tokens consumed by the other CSS files, and `custom.css` holds the overrides themselves, written against existing Sphinx theme selectors.

The load order is worth noting because it constrains how anyone edits these files. Since `initialize.js` runs on DOM content loaded and drives the loaders, adding a new script means registering it in `html_js_files` in the right position and wiring its function into the initialize sequence. Splitting constants, helpers, loaders and orchestration across four files rather than one bundle means the theme changes are reviewable, but it also means the entry point is not obvious from the file listing alone.

Translation runs through Crowdin, and the README forbids editing the catalogs

The Contributing section has one unusual instruction, set in bold: do not make any corrections to `.po` or `.pot` files, because those are handled in the translation management platform Crowdin. Two separate Crowdin projects are named. `crowdin.com/project/remix-translation` is for the documentation, and `crowdin.com/project/remix-ui` is for translations of Remix's interface, which is code from another repository.

That split explains a structural oddity in this tree. The documentation here is internationalized through an external service, so `crowdin.yml` and `translation.md` at the root are configuration and process notes rather than translation content. Anyone who has contributed to a gettext-based docs project and reached for a `.po` editor will be told to stop, which saves a category of merge conflict that would otherwise arrive from dozens of contributors at once.

The general contribution path is otherwise conventional. The README says contributions are welcome, points at the project's Discord server, and treats suggestions, issues, queries and feedback as the same channel. With 23 open issues against 2,352 stars, the issue queue is small relative to the audience, which fits a repository where most traffic is pull requests of prose.

Vale, a custom wordlist, and a prose linter for technical docs

Two files in the tree explain how the documentation keeps its voice. `vale.ini` configures Vale, a prose linter, and `.custom_wordlist.txt` is the exceptions list. `.pymarkdown.json` handles Markdown formatting rules. None of these are explained in prose in the README beyond the filenames, so their exact configuration is something you have to open.

The custom wordlist matters more than it looks. Technical Ethereum documentation is full of terms that a general-purpose prose linter will flag: project names, protocol identifiers, Solidity keywords, and the various capitalizations that do not follow English sentence conventions. A dedicated wordlist is the standard way to stop Vale from rewriting text that is already correct for its domain, and its presence alongside `vale.ini` suggests the team runs prose checks as part of review rather than leaving style to individual reviewers.

The CI surface in this repository is not documented in the README beyond the Read the Docs build badge at the top, so what runs on a pull request is partly discoverable only by opening `.github/`. For a docs repository that is a small gap, and one a contributor will close quickly by reading the workflow files.

What the releases tell you about this repository's half-life

The release history is the most surprising thing in the metadata, and it deserves to be read carefully rather than skimmed. There are three releases: v0.12.0 published 2023-03-15, v0.11.0 published 2022-08-04, and v0.10.4 published 2021-03-17. The first two bodies read, in full, Update for stable version of docs. The third has no body at all.

So the version tags here mean documentation content versions rather than product versions, and the last one is from March 2023. That does not mean the repository is dead. It was pushed on 2026-09-25, and the branch is master, so work continues in commits. It means the tagged releases stopped being the unit of work roughly three and a half years ago, which is entirely reasonable for a repository where a deploy happens on merge and nobody needs a version marker for a prose fix. The topics confirm the domain: blockchain, debugging, evm, ethereum, remix, remix-ide, smart-contracts, solidity and vyper.

What the README does not cover is the documentation content itself, the plugin list, or the build process beyond `make run`. Those live at remix-ide.readthedocs.io, and the IDE's actual behaviour lives in the remix-project repository and at app.remix.live. The license is Apache-2.0, which is the one substantive difference from the GPL-2.0 used by the IDE itself.

Editorial conclusion

This repository is documentation infrastructure that happens to be named after the product it documents. What it contains is a Sphinx tree, a Read the Docs configuration, seven custom CSS and JavaScript files under `docs/_static/`, a Crowdin config, a Vale setup and a custom wordlist. What it does not contain is a single line of IDE code; that lives in remix-project and is served at app.remix.live, with the About page in remix-website. The fork count of 960 is the number to keep in mind when judging the project, and it belongs to a docs tree. If you want to run these docs locally, `git clone`, `cd docs`, `make run`, and read `conf.py` first. If you want to change how Remix IDE behaves, you are in the wrong repository and the README's codebase table is the map out of it.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. License: Apache-2.0
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. remix-project-org/remix-ide on GitHub