Technical Writing: Skimmed First, Trusted Enough to Finish
Developers skim before they commit. A document earns the full read by answering three questions in its first screen: what is this, why should I care, and how do I start. Everything below serves that contract.
| Resource | Load when... |
|---|---|
resources/doc-types.md | Choosing what KIND of page to write — the four Diátaxis modes, tutorial-vs-how-to, the types the model omits, minimalism scoped per type |
resources/readme.md | Writing or overhauling a README — the cognitive funnel, short-vs-long resolved, README-driven development |
resources/docs-quality.md | Making docs enforceable — prose lint, executable examples, link checking, friction logs, timeless-docs, every-page-is-page-one |
resources/agent-docs.md | Docs serving AI agents — the honest llms.txt verdict, markdown endpoints, RAG-chunkable pages |
resources/formatting.md | Structural rules — titles, headings, paragraphs, lists, intros/outros, tables of contents |
resources/references.md | Sources for every claim above |
One Primary Reader Job Per Page
Choose the page's primary reader job: tutorial, how-to, reference, or
explanation (Diátaxis; its honest limits live in
resources/doc-types.md). Supporting material may cross a boundary
when that helps the same job. Split the page when mixed purposes make
the next action, completeness contract, or intended audience unclear.
Principles
- Reader-first — lead with the payoff; the reader's next action is the organizing principle, not the system's internal structure. Name things by what readers recognize, not how the code is built.
- Scannable — clear headings that summarize their section's payoff, short paragraphs, purposeful emphasis. Add a heading when it gives a skimmer a useful landmark; do not optimize for a word-count quota.
- Plain and direct — active voice, second person for instructions, short sentences for complex ideas. Complete sentences beat fragments and arrow chains: readable matters more than terse.
- Selective, not compressed — the way to keep a doc short is to cut what doesn't change the reader's next step, never to compress the prose into jargon the reader must decode.
Material Claims Need Receipts
Make material capability, current-state, compatibility, and quantitative claims checkable. Explanatory prose, clearly labelled judgment, and normative design rationale do not need a fake command or date; unsupported promotional claims do.
- No capability claim without evidence: numbers a reader can verify, a command they can run, a file they can open. "Fast" is marketing; "the gates run in 14 seconds on this repo's CI" is a claim with a receipt.
- Counts and versions rot: changing operational numbers quoted in prose (test counts, coverage, versions) are maintenance liabilities — either generate it, date it, or bind it to the kept-current rule (updating it is part of every change's definition of done).
- Honest limits are content, not confession: when the page's scope could imply protection, coverage, or capability it does not provide, name those limits where the reader makes the decision. A short document need not grow a ceremonial limits section when its bounded scope is already explicit.
- Idle and empty states must speak: "0 items processed" that reads like success is a lie of layout. Distinguish "nothing to do" from "did nothing" everywhere output appears in docs and examples.
- Timeless maintained guidance: evergreen READMEs and reference docs avoid unowned "coming soon", "currently", or "new in…" labels. Release notes, migration guides, deprecation notices, and time-bounded status pages may need temporal language; attach a version/date and an owner or removal condition so it remains evidence instead of stale promotion.
Docs Are Behavior — Verify Them
A document that describes a system is a claim about that system, and claims get verified:
- Verify against the source, not memory: every material flag, exit code, config key, and executable command a doc asks readers to rely on is checked against the code before it ships. Execute the claim when doing so is safe, authorized, and proportionate; otherwise record the evidence gap.
- Machine-check what machines can check: table-of-contents anchors against the renderer's real slug rules, links against files, command examples against the binary. Hand-verification is the fallback, not the default.
- Update docs in the same reviewable change: a behavior change that leaves its documentation stale is incomplete work. Follow the repository's commit policy rather than imposing one globally.
Maintained Docs Describe Current Truth
Use resources/docs-quality.md for the full state-based lifecycle and Git-archaeology workflow.
- Keep plans and specification workspaces only while their outcomes remain unfinished. Delete them when the outcome ships or their assumptions are superseded; Git history is the archive.
- Promote lasting constraints to their current owner: source or executable tests for behavior, accepted ADRs for architecture decisions, package or operational docs for maintained procedures, and the authoritative glossary for domain vocabulary.
- Do not make maintained docs depend on deleted specifications or unexplained delivery identifiers. Introduce the purpose in plain language before any genuinely necessary issue, PR, task, requirement, specification, or ADR identifier.
- Give documentation indexes a clear starting point and distinguish current authority, active work, decisions, and historical evidence. Prefer a small navigable set of trusted pages; delete duplicated, obsolete, speculative, generated, or unowned prose.
- Documentation-only changes do not inherently require TDD. Any executable documentation guard still needs a focused test proving it can fail.
Writing for AI Agents Too
Developer docs now have two audiences. Agent-readable means:
- Enumerable over prose-only: anything an agent must choose from — options, flags, exit codes, states — appears in a table row, not only inside a paragraph.
- Preconditions and postconditions per operation: what must be true before, what changes after, what exit codes mean. A state-machine table ("in state X, the one correct next action is Y") outperforms narrative for both audiences.
- Exact strings: agents (and humans under pressure) copy-paste. Give the exact command, the exact config block, the exact error message — never a paraphrase.
Document Shapes
- README / landing: first screen answers what/why/how-to-start; table of contents when it materially improves navigation; quickstart as one coherent journey in true order; honest limits before credits.
- Tutorial: state the destination up front ("you will have X working"); number steps; every step's output shown so readers know they're on track; end with where to go next.
- Reference: completeness over narrative; one entry per flag/option/state; generated where possible; agent-readable tables.
- Proposal / design doc: the decision requested up front, options with honest trade-offs, a recommendation with reasoning, and what evidence would change it.
- PR description / release notes: what changed for the READER of the change (behavior, migration), not a commit-log paraphrase.
Boundaries
| Situation | Skill |
|---|---|
| Choosing and authoring diagrams | diagrams |
| REST/API reference semantics (errors, pagination, versioning) | api-design |
| CLI help text, exit codes, output design | cli-design |
| Documenting expectations, gotchas, decisions while fresh | expectations |
| Domain vocabulary in prose | ubiquitous-language (where installed) |
| Sentence-level voice, generic prose, or AI-shaped writing | clarity (where installed) |
| Plain English, lay readers, translation, or ASD-STE100 | simple-english (where installed) |
Verification Checklist
- First screen answers what / why / how-to-start
- Headings summarize payoffs; a ToC is present where warranted and its anchors are machine-checked
- Material capability/current-state/quantitative claims carry a receipt or date; promotional claims have evidence
- Commands, flags, and executable examples readers rely on are verified against source and run where feasible
- Material limits appear where implied scope could otherwise mislead
- Enumerable facts appear in tables; exact strings given for anything copy-pasteable
- Counts/versions bound to the kept-current rule or generated
- Doc changes ride the same reviewable change as the behavior they describe
- Maintained docs describe current truth; completed or superseded workspaces are deleted
- Lasting constraints live with their current owner, not only in historical delivery artifacts
- Indexes distinguish current authority, active work, decisions, and history
