software-documentation-maintenance

name

software-documentation-maintenance

description

Design, restructure, and maintain a software repository's documentation system, including its required docs/domain, docs/architecture, and docs/operations map, canonical ownership, technical evidence, indexes, links, and change synchronization. Use when creating or migrating developer docs, documenting system behavior or design decisions, establishing documentation rules, or reviewing repository-wide documentation completeness. Pair with prose-quality-check for wording and with a domain skill for specialized technical correctness.

Software Documentation Maintenance

Build a documentation system that lets each reader find the applicable truth, understand its evidence and scope, and update it when the software changes.

Contents

• Goals
• Responsibility boundaries
• Required documentation map
• Workflow

Goals

• Give every document a named audience, question, canonical owner, and change trigger.
• Separate external technical knowledge, internal design, and operations in a predictable layout.
• Keep claims synchronized with source code, configuration, schemas, assets, automation, and independently versioned dependencies.
• Migrate documentation without losing facts, rationale, links, or discoverability.

Responsibility boundaries

This skill owns repository-level documentation architecture and technical-truth maintenance:

• which documents should exist and how readers discover them;
• which document canonically owns a fact;
• what evidence and version scope support a technical claim;
• how external knowledge, internal design, operations, product guidance, and governance relate;
• which implementation changes require documentation updates.

Use prose-quality-check after these decisions are settled to improve wording, paragraph and list shape, audience fit, and preserved nuance. Prose review must not silently decide document ownership, technical evidence, or migration coverage.

Resolve companion Skill names from the canonical metadata in the same Skill collection that provides this Skill, not from an older deployed copy in the repository being documented. The current prose-only companion is prose-quality-check. Treat any other name for it in target instructions, manifests, lockfiles, generated deployments, or handoff text as one coordinated migration finding; do not repeat a legacy consumer name as if it were current.

Use a domain-specific quality skill for specialized correctness. For example, bepinex-mono-mod-quality-check owns which BepInEx, Harmony, Unity, game-version, networking, Core/Interop, packaging, release, and Thunderstore facts are required and whether they are correct. This skill owns their canonical placement, indexes, scope labels, links, and synchronization. When both apply, establish the document map here, obtain or verify the technical facts with the domain skill, then place them without duplicating their source of truth.

Required documentation map

Require this base structure for a software repository:

README.md
docs/
  README.md
  domain/
    README.md
  architecture/
    README.md
  operations/
    README.md

• README.md is the repository entry point. Link to docs/README.md and keep product-facing or contributor-facing entry information there rather than duplicating the developer index.
• docs/README.md defines the ownership boundaries and links all three section indexes.
• docs/domain/ owns external and reusable knowledge about independently versioned APIs, protocols, frameworks, platforms, data formats, upstream products, and integration techniques.
• docs/architecture/ owns this software's models, invariants, workflows, component boundaries, policies, tradeoffs, and accepted limitations.
• docs/operations/ owns repeatable development, test, migration, deployment, release, recovery, incident, and artifact-generation procedures.

Keep all four indexes even when a section has no detailed document yet. State that it currently has no entries and name the condition that would add one. This makes absence explicit instead of making readers guess whether documentation is missing.

Extend the base map when a distinct audience or change lifecycle justifies it. Examples include docs/user/, docs/api/, docs/security/, docs/decisions/, or nested concern directories. Add each extension to docs/README.md, define its ownership against the three base sections, and avoid parallel categories that could canonically own the same fact. Existing repositories may retain clear equivalent names during a staged migration, but the final map must provide the required base paths unless repository instructions explicitly document an approved exception.

Workflow

1. Read and inventory

Read repository instructions, every documentation index, the root README, contributor guidance, relevant implementation and configuration, and configured Markdown or link checks. Preserve local terminology unless it conflicts with the required ownership boundaries.

For every current document and incoming fact, record:

• audience and question or task served;
• canonical facts owned and documents depended on;
• evidence source and version or environment scope;
• change trigger, such as an API, workflow, configuration, UI, or release-process change;
• discovery path from README.md through docs/README.md and the applicable section index.

Treat missing ownership, duplicated truth, undocumented dependencies, stale claims, and orphaned documents as separate findings.

2. Classify at the fact boundary

Use the required map rather than a file's current name:

• Put facts that remain useful if this software is replaced by another integration in domain/.
• Put facts about this software's own design choices and behavior in architecture/.
• Put repeatable maintainer actions in operations/.
• Keep user contracts, installation, configuration, examples, troubleshooting, and compatibility in the root README or an indexed user-facing extension; link to technical detail instead of copying it.
• Keep contribution, review, security-reporting, and agent policy in their repository governance files; link to operations when a procedure is shared.

Keep each fact in one canonical place and link to it elsewhere. Split a mixed document when its facts have different owners, audiences, evidence sources, or change triggers. Do not create a concern document without a distinct question, but do retain each required section index.

3. Build indexes and concern documents

Make indexes navigational rather than duplicative. State the section boundary and name the question answered by every child document. Ensure the root README exposes docs/README.md; do not rely on contributors discovering docs/ by browsing the tree.

Split concern documents when they change independently. Good architecture concerns include models and invariants, workflows and lifecycles, component or integration boundaries, and consequential decisions. Good domain concerns follow an independently versioned external dependency. Good operations concerns follow a repeatable procedure with one trigger and verification contract.

4. Establish evidence and scope

Inspect authoritative source code, configuration, schemas, generated artifacts, automation, serialized assets, or upstream specifications before asserting current behavior. Record an applicable version, build, API level, environment, or deployment target once in a clear Target or Scope section when truth varies. Separate:

• verified current behavior from inference;
• observed behavior from intended or proposed behavior;
• public contract from implementation detail;
• external-system facts from this product's policy or design choice.

Do not include machine-local paths, secrets, incidental generated output, or substantial copied third-party source. Give enough evidence detail for a future maintainer to repeat the check. Inspect configuration, schemas, declarative bindings, generated code, and assets when they can override or complete executable behavior.

For domain/, document the members, messages, fields, ordering, ownership, failure behavior, or lifecycle required to integrate safely. Replace the canonical concern document when its target advances unless parallel targets are intentionally supported. Describe alternatives only when they are credible, and distinguish evidence-derived integration constraints from this product's choice.

For architecture/, answer the applicable questions:

• Model: Which concepts, values, stores, and invariants exist, and what lifetime do they have?
• Flow: What initiates work, who owns transitions, and how do rejection, retries, partial completion, and cleanup behave?
• Boundary: Which dependencies and responsibilities belong to each component, and in which direction may they flow?
• Decision: Which credible alternatives existed, what was selected, and why does it fit the product constraints?

Start each architecture document by linking the domain documents it assumes. If its rationale requires an undocumented external fact, add or update the domain document first. Describe known defects and intended-but-unimplemented paths explicitly instead of presenting the desired design as current behavior.

For operations/, state prerequisites, inputs, exact commands or actions where precision matters, expected outputs, state-changing effects, rollback or recovery, verification, and the trigger for updating the procedure. Verify commands, paths, environment variables, CI jobs, package contents, and release targets against the repository.

5. Migrate without losing information

1. Create a section-level map from every source passage to its canonical destination.
2. Add the required directories, destinations, and indexes before deleting or renaming sources.
3. Preserve rationale, limitations, evidence status, and historical context; shorter text is not equivalent when it loses decisions or failure behavior.
4. Update root discovery, inbound and outbound links, repository instructions, examples, navigation, and generated or package-facing copies in the same change.
5. Search for stale paths, headings, Skill names, terminology, commands, and duplicated claims.
6. Delete an old document only after every still-valid fact has a destination and the new path is discoverable.

6. Verify and report

Run repository-configured Markdown, link, spelling, example, schema, build, or documentation-site checks. Inspect the documentation diff against implementation and configuration changes. Verify:

• all required directories and indexes exist and their boundaries do not overlap;
• the root README links the developer documentation entry point;
• every maintained document is reachable through an index and answers one named question;
• every technical fact has one canonical owner and an identifiable evidence source;
• version and environment scope is explicit where truth varies;
• current, inferred, proposed, deprecated, and known-broken states are distinguishable;
• architecture links its external assumptions instead of duplicating them;
• operational steps state prerequisites, effects, failure behavior, and verification;
• all relative links, anchors, commands, code examples, and referenced paths resolve;
• renamed or removed documents and Skill names have no stale references;
• changed contracts, dependencies, workflows, and operations have corresponding documentation updates or an explicit reason why none is needed.

When reviewing rather than editing, report each finding with its location, violated ownership or evidence rule, reader impact, and smallest corrective action. State explicitly when no issue is found. On handoff, report the resulting map, checks performed, evidence gaps, and any extension or approved exception with its reason.