Add root property to tabs to designate a landing page

[rkhoriander]

Currently, root is supported on groups to designate a main page that the group title navigates to. Tabs have no equivalent; clicking a tab always navigates to the first page Mintlify finds in the tab's navigation structure.

Our use case

Every tab in our docs has a standalone overview/landing page that should appear when the tab is clicked, with the tab's groups organized beneath it as subsections. This is a common and semantically correct IA pattern.

What currently works (but blocks $ref splitting)

A pages array on the tab with the overview page as the first entry works correctly for navigation:

json{
  "tab": "Get Started",
  "pages": [
    "get-started",
    { "group": "Start Building", ... },
    { "group": "Observability Fundamentals", ... }
  ]
}

The overview page renders correctly and the tab lands on it when clicked. However, because pages is an array, we can't use $ref to split the tab's content into per-section files; $ref doesn't support inline array splicing (See one of my other feature requests). This forces us to maintain a custom assembly script instead of using native $ref.

Other approaches we tried that didn't work

1. $ref as an element within the pages array, with the section file as a bare array of group objects:

   json{ "pages": ["get-started", { "$ref": "navigation/get-started.json" }] }
   

   Result: no error, but nav disappeared entirely.

2. $ref replacing the entire pages key, with the section file wrapped in { "pages": [...] }:

   json{ "pages": { "$ref": "navigation/get-started.json" } }
   

   Result: same — nav disappeared entirely.

3. $ref replacing the tab object, with the section file wrapped in { "groups": [...] }:

   json{ "tab": "Get Started", "$ref": "navigation/get-started.json" }
   

   Result: nav renders correctly, but there is no way to place the overview page outside a group, which breaks the IA.

4. Empty group with root as a workaround for the landing page:

   json{ "group": "Overview", "root": "get-started" }
   

   Result: overview page and nav render, but an expand/collapse icon appears in the sidebar with nothing beneath it, which is a confusing UI artifact for users. Omitting pages entirely made no difference. Using an empty string for group broke the nav entirely.

i confirmed with Mintlify support that these are all current limitations.

Requested behavior

Support a root property on tabs, equivalent to the existing group behavior:

json{
  "tab": "Get Started",
  "root": "get-started",
  "$ref": "navigation/get-started.json"
}

Clicking the tab would navigate to the root page. The root page could appear in the sidebar above the groups with no expand icon (or not appear at all).