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Docs 404 experience

2026-09-18

Unknown URLs on docs.dreamlake.ai used to answer with the homepage and HTTP 200: netlify.toml carried a /* -> /index.html 200 SPA catch-all, a leftover from before the site was fully prerendered. Broken links looked healthy to crawlers and link checkers, and the reader who followed one got a silent redirect-to-home. The pages/_error/+Page.tsx placeholder (a bare centered "404") existed but nothing served it.

This change makes the error page a first-class docs page and fixes the status code:

  • Status code. The catch-all in netlify.toml is now /* -> /404.html 404. Vike already prerenders pages/_error to dist/client/404.html; the rule is not forced, so every existing file (pages, .md twins, pagefind, images) still wins, and the _redirects 301s are processed first as before.
  • The page. Rewritten to render like a docs page inside the normal dockit shell (topbar, sidebar, theme): an HTTP 404 mono kicker, the standard H1/lede typography, the requested path echoed back (filled in after hydration — the prerendered HTML is built for the placeholder /404 URL), a ⌘K search hint, a CardGrid of the main destinations (overview, CLI, workflows, Lakeshore, API, cli.dreamlake.ai), and an open-an-issue escape hatch.
  • 404 vs 500. The component reads Vike's is404 page prop and shows a "Something went wrong / reload" variant for render errors; undefined is treated as 404 since static hosting only reaches the page for missing paths.
  • Search hygiene. The error page carries data-pagefind-ignore — the Layout marks every page's <main> indexable and the page has no frontmatter to say noindex, so it was being indexed (pagefind page count drops 71 → 70 with content words back to baseline).

Validation: full pnpm build passes; netlify dev --offline against dist/client (which applies netlify.toml and _redirects semantics) returns 200 for /, /cli, /cli/, /lakeshore/, /release-notes/, /index.md, /llms.txt and /pagefind/pagefind-entry.json, 301 for the legacy /hosts/enroll, and 404 with the new page body for /this-page-does-not-exist and /cli/nope. Playwright screenshots verify the page in light and dark themes with the requested path hydrated in, and the homepage rendering unchanged.

Remaining: live verification after the next pnpm deploy (curl an unknown path on docs.dreamlake.ai for status 404 + page body, and the homepage for 200) — recorded on the PR.