Keeping API Docs Accurate by Regenerating Them With Every Spec Change

Documentation remains accurate only when its regeneration is built into the same pipeline that modifies the API specification, rather than relying on someone to rebuild it manually after a merge. The recommended approach treats the OpenAPI description as the single source of truth and regenerates reference docs on each commit, failing the build if the spec is invalid or output cannot be produced. Narrative content that a schema cannot express, such as guides and migration notes, should live as reviewed, versioned files beside the generated reference. Manually maintained documentation tends to drift, since changes like renamed fields or deprecated endpoints can go unreflected until customers encounter the mismatch. Enforcing generation and validation in CI, along with preview builds and post-deploy checks, helps ensure the published docs match the current API version.