it may be removed or modified at any time. If you have any questions, feedback or concerns, please create an issue using
the label `APIDocs`, or reach out to the Kibana Tech Leads
who are temporarily owning and maintaining this system.
</DocCallOut>
## What is included
Every plugin that
<DocLink id="kibPlatformIntro" section="public-plugin-api" text="exposes functionality for other plugins to use"/> will have
API documentation automatically generated (note this system
does *not* handle REST APIs).
<DocCallOut title="@internal tags">API items that have an `@internal` in the comment are not
included in the documentation system.</DocCallOut>
## How it works
If you change or delete a public plugin API, or add a new one, you will have to run the command `node scripts/build_api_docs` in order to update the
docs in your PR, or CI will fail. When this happens, consider:
1. If this affects an existing API item, have you emailed the `kibana-contributors` list with a heads up? It's important to give advance
notice, since there may be corner cases you aren't aware of, even if your PR passes CI.
2. If the change you are making aren't relevant to contributors, consider a) making the API private, or b) adding the `@internal` flag to it.
## Q & A
### Why do I not see my plugin's public API?
There is one extra step required to have your API docs show up in the _navigation_ of the docs system. Follow
the instructions <DocLink id="docsSetup" section="configure-the-nav-for-your-content" text="here" /> to learn how to
configure the navigation menu. The nav file you need to
edit is: [https://github.com/elastic/elastic-docs/blob/master/config/nav-kibana-dev.ts](https://github.com/elastic/elastic-docs/blob/master/config/nav-kibana-dev.ts)
Your API docs will exist in the top level [`api_docs` folder](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/tree/main/api_docs) and will use a doc id of the pattern `kib${PluginName}PluginApi`.