A Practical Documentation System Built for Solo Founders and Small Startups

A solo founder building a production AI system outlines a documentation framework designed for startups where no one is solely responsible for keeping docs accurate. The approach is based on Diátaxis, a framework that categorizes documentation into four distinct types: tutorials, how-to guides, reference material, and explanations. The founder argues that the most common documentation failure is mixing these types, such as a beginner tutorial that drifts into exhaustive reference content. A key principle is coupling documentation updates to the same pull request that changes the underlying code, ensuring docs fail visibly when they go stale. Reference documentation should be auto-generated from typed code wherever possible to prevent the category most prone to drift from becoming outdated.