Developer Shares Hard Lessons from Building AI Docs Tool Entirely in Rust

Sergio Tortosa, a solo developer, spent the past year and a half building Dokumentado, an AI-powered documentation generator that connects to code repositories, using the Rust programming language. He chose Rust primarily out of personal preference and for its reliability benefits, including low maintenance overhead, strong error resistance, and stable dependencies. The project presented significant technical challenges, particularly around integrating APIs that operate differently — such as Salesforce's per-file approach versus the per-project model used elsewhere. These integration hurdles were compounded by Rust's complex async programming model, especially when working with AsyncStreams alongside lifetimes and generics. Tortosa shares his experience as both a technical reference and a cautionary account of startup decision-making for developers considering Rust for web projects.