Keynote: The Human API: Building Your Project's Second Source of Truth
summary
Rebuilt large projects’ documentation as a deliberate second source of truth, generating API reference from code comments and consolidating community knowledge into a CMS instead of a bespoke platform; uses Docusaurus, editable examples that run in the browser, and test-driven sample code to keep examples working. Results: faster onboarding, more community-written tutorials, formal doc stewards and deputies maintain accuracy, and documentation prevents knowledge loss that otherwise drives contributors away.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker intro
- 1:49The knowledge transfer problem
- 4:15Start with writing things down
- 7:08Code comments as documentation
- 9:15Choosing a documentation platform
- 10:59Mentoring new team members
- 12:48Tutorials versus guides
- 14:13Building community contributions
- 15:44Teaching people by doing
- 17:14Scaling docs with code
- 18:15Docs as second source of truth
- 20:23Documentation is a commitment
- 21:06Two projects one lesson
- 22:36Summary and resources
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