Currently, the only way I can find to get current design assets used by readthedocs.org is to install the full theme, and build it, which requires SASS, etc.
I'd like to just get a static set of files that would let me see locally what my build will look like on readthedocs. Is there a way to do this without building the assets myself from the above link? The goal is for it to be easy for novices to contribute to the docs.
You only need to build the theme if you want to contribute/develop for it. You can install the theme using pip install sphinx_rtd_theme. You can then use the theme in your Sphinx conf.py. See: http://read-the-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/theme.html
# on_rtd is whether we are on readthedocs.org
import os
on_rtd = os.environ.get('READTHEDOCS', None) == 'True'
if not on_rtd: # only import and set the theme if we're building docs locally
import sphinx_rtd_theme
html_theme = 'sphinx_rtd_theme'
html_theme_path = [sphinx_rtd_theme.get_html_theme_path()]
# otherwise, readthedocs.org uses their theme by default, so no need to specify it
