Last Friday I got to talk to Hahnbee Lee, CTO of Mintlify about an important and often underrated topic - documentation!
Mintlify powers the docs of many fast-growing startups, as well as companies like Anthropic and Pinecone, and Hahnbee has spent years studying how to write excellent documentation.
I had 3 major takeaways from our conversation:
🥅 Developers come to docs with a goal
Developers usually come to your docs with a specific goal. Your goal as a doc writer is to get them to that goal as quickly as possible. The better you are at doing that, the more developers you can get using your product!
📚 Separate Knowledge from Instruction
Your quickstart doesn't need "why's", it only needs "do's".
Instead of:
"Next, to your header add your GitHub token and Greptile key. The GitHub token allows Greptile to access your repos, and the Greptile key links back to your billing account."
Say:
"Add GitHub token and Greptile key to the header"
🔍 Attention to Detail
The risk of a buggy or sloppy developer tool, especially one that might go into production, is *catastrophic*. Documentation with mistakes are almost a warning of what comes next, and can subconsciously scare away your users.
High attention to detail has the opposite effect. It's a relatively low effort way to inspire confidence in your users. Think about the attention to detail in Stripe's docs, often considered the gold standard:
- Your Stripe key auto-populates in all the code examples
- When you set a code sample box to TypeScript, every other box on the docs site also changes!
What does this level of user obsession and attention to detail on the docs tell you about the people who built this product? They care, and they are meticulous. Characteristics that you would want your payment processor to have!
Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcasts!
Especialista em Gestão de Mídias LinkedIn Arquivista/ Consultor de projetos junto ao Ministério do Planejamento e Orçamento
3wAgradecimento por compartilhar