Like Nix packages, NixOS modules can declare meta-attributes to provide extra information. Module meta-attributes are defined in the meta.nix special module. meta is a top level attribute like options and config. Available meta-attributes are maintainers and doc. Each of the meta-attributes must be defined at most once per module file. { config, lib, pkgs, ... }: { options = { ... }; config = { ... }; meta = { maintainers = with lib.maintainers; [ ericsagnes ]; doc = ./default.xml; }; } maintainers contains a list of the module maintainers. doc point to a valid docbook file containing the module documentation, its contents are automatically added to the . Changes to a module documentation must be checked to be non-breaking by building the NixOS manual. $ nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manual