documentation

name	documentation
description	Technical writing, API docs, and documentation best practices
domain	software-engineering
version	1.0.0
tags	["documentation","technical-writing","api-docs","adr","readme","runbooks"]
triggers	{"keywords":{"primary":["documentation","docs","readme","api docs","technical writing","wiki"],"secondary":["adr","runbook","changelog","jsdoc","docstring","swagger","typedoc"]},"context_boost":["write","explain","onboarding","knowledge"],"context_penalty":["deployment","infrastructure","testing"],"priority":"medium"}

Documentation

Overview

Documentation as a first-class engineering artifact. Good docs reduce onboarding time, support tickets, and cognitive load.

---

Documentation Types

Type	Audience	Purpose	Update Frequency
README	New developers	Quick start	Per major change
API Docs	API consumers	Reference	Per API change
Architecture	Team	Design decisions	Per design change
Runbooks	Operations	Incident response	Per incident
Tutorials	Users	Learning	Periodically

---

README Best Practices

Structure

# Project Name

> One-line description of what this project does.

[![Build Status](badge)](link)
[![Coverage](badge)](link)
[![License](badge)](link)

## Features

- Feature 1: Brief description
- Feature 2: Brief description
- Feature 3: Brief description

## Quick Start

```bash
# Install
npm install my-project

# Configure
export API_KEY=your-key

# Run
npx my-project start

Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• PostgreSQL 15+

Steps

1. Clone the repository
2. Install dependencies: npm install
3. Copy .env.example to .env
4. Run migrations: npm run db:migrate
5. Start the server: npm start

Usage

Basic Example

import { Client } from 'my-project';

const client = new Client({ apiKey: 'xxx' });
const result = await client.doSomething();

Advanced Configuration

[Link to detailed docs]

API Reference

[Link to API docs]

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

License

MIT - see LICENSE

---

## API Documentation

### OpenAPI/Swagger

```yaml
openapi: 3.0.3
info:
  title: User API
  description: |
    API for managing users.

    ## Authentication
    All endpoints require Bearer token authentication.

    ## Rate Limiting
    - 100 requests per minute per API key
    - 429 response when exceeded
  version: 1.0.0

servers:
  - url: https://api.example.com/v1
    description: Production
  - url: https://staging-api.example.com/v1
    description: Staging

paths:
  /users:
    get:
      summary: List users
      description: Returns a paginated list of users.
      operationId: listUsers
      tags:
        - Users
      parameters:
        - name: limit
          in: query
          description: Maximum number of users to return
          schema:
            type: integer
            default: 20
            maximum: 100
        - name: cursor
          in: query
          description: Pagination cursor from previous response
          schema:
            type: string
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful response
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/UserList'
              example:
                data:
                  - id: "usr_123"
                    email: "[e-mail]"
                    name: "John Doe"
                meta:
                  hasMore: true
                  nextCursor: "eyJpZCI6MTIzfQ"
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'

components:
  schemas:
    User:
      type: object
      required:
        - id
        - email
      properties:
        id:
          type: string
          description: Unique identifier
          example: "usr_123"
        email:
          type: string
          format: email
          description: User's email address
        name:
          type: string
          description: User's display name

  responses:
    Unauthorized:
      description: Authentication required
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            type: object
            properties:
              error:
                type: string
                example: "Invalid or missing API key"

Code Examples in Docs

## Creating a User

### Request

```bash
curl -X POST https://api.example.com/v1/users \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "email": "[e-mail]",
    "name": "John Doe"
  }'

Response

{
  "id": "usr_123",
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "name": "John Doe",
  "createdAt": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z"
}

Error Response

{
  "error": {
    "code": "validation_error",
    "message": "Invalid email format",
    "field": "email"
  }
}

---

## Architecture Decision Records (ADR)

### Template

```markdown
# ADR-001: Use PostgreSQL for Primary Database

## Status
Accepted

## Context
We need to choose a primary database for our application.
Requirements:
- ACID transactions
- Complex queries with joins
- Proven reliability at scale
- Good ecosystem and tooling

## Decision
We will use PostgreSQL as our primary database.

## Alternatives Considered

### MySQL
- Pros: Widely used, good performance
- Cons: Less feature-rich, weaker JSON support

### MongoDB
- Pros: Flexible schema, easy horizontal scaling
- Cons: No ACID transactions across documents, eventual consistency

### CockroachDB
- Pros: Distributed, PostgreSQL-compatible
- Cons: Higher operational complexity, newer technology

## Consequences

### Positive
- Strong consistency guarantees
- Rich query capabilities (CTEs, window functions)
- Excellent JSON support for semi-structured data
- Large community and ecosystem

### Negative
- Vertical scaling limits
- Need to manage read replicas for high read loads
- Schema migrations require careful planning

### Risks
- May need sharding solution if we exceed single-node capacity
- Team needs PostgreSQL expertise

## References
- [PostgreSQL Documentation](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/)
- [Internal benchmark results](link)

ADR Index

# Architecture Decision Records

| ID | Title | Status | Date |
|----|-------|--------|------|
| [ADR-001](adr-001.md) | Use PostgreSQL | Accepted | 2024-01-01 |
| [ADR-002](adr-002.md) | JWT Authentication | Accepted | 2024-01-05 |
| [ADR-003](adr-003.md) | Microservices Split | Proposed | 2024-01-10 |
| [ADR-004](adr-004.md) | GraphQL vs REST | Superseded by ADR-006 | 2024-01-15 |

---

Code Documentation

JSDoc / TSDoc

/**
 * Calculates the total price including tax and discounts.
 *
 * @param items - Array of cart items
 * @param options - Calculation options
 * @returns The calculated price breakdown
 *
 * @example
 * ```typescript
 * const result = calculatePrice(
 *   [{ id: '1', price: 100, quantity: 2 }],
 *   { taxRate: 0.1, discountCode: 'SAVE10' }
 * );
 * console.log(result.total); // 198
 * ```
 *
 * @throws {ValidationError} If items array is empty
 * @throws {InvalidDiscountError} If discount code is invalid
 *
 * @see {@link applyDiscount} for discount logic
 * @since 2.0.0
 */
function calculatePrice(
  items: CartItem[],
  options: PriceOptions
): PriceBreakdown {
  // Implementation
}

/**
 * Represents a user in the system.
 *
 * @remarks
 * Users are created through the signup flow or admin panel.
 * Soft deletion is used - check `deletedAt` for active status.
 */
interface User {
  /** Unique identifier (UUID v4) */
  id: string;

  /** Email address (unique, validated format) */
  email: string;

  /**
   * User's display name
   * @defaultValue Derived from email if not provided
   */
  name?: string;

  /** Account creation timestamp */
  createdAt: Date;

  /** Soft deletion timestamp, null if active */
  :  | ;
}

Inline Comments

// ✅ Good: Explains WHY
// Use binary search because items are sorted and list can have 100k+ entries
const index = binarySearch(items, target);

// ✅ Good: Explains non-obvious behavior
// Sleep 100ms to avoid rate limiting from external API
await sleep(100);

// ✅ Good: Documents workaround
// HACK: Safari doesn't support this API, fall back to polyfill
// TODO: Remove when Safari 17 adoption > 90%
const result = window.api?.call() ?? polyfill();

// ❌ Bad: States the obvious
// Loop through users
for (const user of users) {

// ❌ Bad: Outdated comment
// Returns user's full name (actually returns email now)
function getUserIdentifier() {
  return user.email;
}

---

Runbooks

Structure

# Runbook: High Memory Usage Alert

## Overview
This runbook addresses alerts when application memory usage exceeds 80%.

## Prerequisites
- Access to Kubernetes cluster
- Permissions to view pods and logs
- Familiarity with application architecture

## Symptoms
- Alert: `HighMemoryUsage` firing
- Metric: `container_memory_usage_bytes` > 80% of limit
- Possible: OOMKilled pods, slow responses

## Diagnosis

### Step 1: Identify affected pods
```bash
kubectl top pods -n production | sort -k3 -rh | head -10

Step 2: Check for memory leaks

# Get heap dump
kubectl exec -it <pod> -- node --heapsnapshot
kubectl cp <pod>:/app/heapsnapshot.heapsnapshot ./heapsnapshot.heapsnapshot

Step 3: Check recent deployments

kubectl rollout history deployment/api -n production

Mitigation

Immediate (if pods are crashing)

# Scale up to distribute load
kubectl scale deployment/api --replicas=10

# Restart pods (rolling)
kubectl rollout restart deployment/api

If memory leak confirmed

1. Identify the leaking code path from heap snapshot
2. Prepare hotfix
3. Deploy fix following standard process

Resolution

• Memory usage returns below 70%
• No OOMKilled events for 30 minutes
• Alert auto-resolves

Escalation

• L1: On-call engineer
• L2: Platform team (if infrastructure issue)
• L3: Application team lead (if code issue)

Related

• Memory Profiling Guide
• Incident INC-123 - Previous memory leak

---

## Documentation Tools

| Tool | Use Case | Format |
|------|----------|--------|
| Docusaurus | Documentation sites | MDX |
| Swagger UI | API reference | OpenAPI |
| Storybook | Component docs | JSX/TSX |
| MkDocs | Technical docs | Markdown |
| Notion | Team wikis | Rich text |

---

## Related Skills

- [[api-design]] - API documentation
- [[code-quality]] - Self-documenting code
- [[reliability-engineering]] - Runbooks