Anyone know an open-source project, even a small one, that needs API docs created or improved? Asking for a #technicalWriting pro who wants more experience with API documentation. #FOSS #techcomm (bonus points if it hits interests like politics, food, beer, auto racing, mapping/OSM, civil engineering, social good...)

"Our biggest challenge as technical writers is bridging the gap between the tech we document and the users trying to understand it. LLMs provide us with the support we need to build that bridge. But it’s more than just a bridge to the user; it’s a mirror for the self. Running a draft through an LLM allows me to remix, rewrite, and truly understand what I’m trying to say. I’m not mindlessly generating with AI; I’m thinking through AI. It’s the writer’s equivalent to rubber duck debugging.

The tools we build using LLMs also allow our words to materialize as direct product impact and socialize our thoughts inside organizations. Think of the typical debates over a confusing user interface. Before, I used to argue based on my own expertise and intuition. Today, I could say, “I ran our docs through Impersonaid and it got stuck at this exact step. Here’s the full transcript.” Suddenly, my argument becomes a reproducible linguistic experiment"

#AI #GenerativeAI #TechnicalWriting #SoftwareDocumentation #UserPersonas #LLMs #Chatbots #SoftwareDevelopment #TechnicalCommunication

https://passo.uno/thinking-better-through-ai/

sakurakat.systems/posts/why-ru... Another month, another blog post This time it's about why I prefer #rustlang, and it's not because of memory safety :P #LearningInPublic #TechnicalWriting #TechBlog

Why Rust? - Sakura Kat Systems

We’re thrilled to welcome Prince Onyeanuna and Ezinne Anne Emilia to the stage!

They’ll be sharing their unique journey and insights in "Contributing to AsyncAPI from a Technical Writer’s POV."

From words to workflows, discover how documentation plays a powerful role in open source success. Don’t miss this session if you're curious about non-code contributions!

🗓 July 18–19
📍 Lagos, Nigeria
🔗 https://conference.asyncapi.com/venue/Lagos

#AsyncAPIConf #OpenSource #TechnicalWriting #EDAs #AsyncAPILagos2025

Happy Friday! Sometimes Past Phil is a legend. All too often, Past Phil is a bastard.

#techWriterLife #technicalWriting

Experimenting with LLMs to generate release notes from requirements, email threads, support tickets, and QA reports.

Gemini helpfully "inferred" a config property. It was nice enough to highlight the hallucination in a second round of analysis, but still… so icky.

#techWriterLife #technicalWriting #ai

Writing a storyboard for a short #video demonstrating how to perform a simple task in a software application, and now I feel like I'm directing a short film with the mouse pointer as its protagonist.

It's very arty and has no dialog.
#TechnicalWriting

"How to leverage documentation effectively in Cursor through prompting, external sources, and internal context
​
Why documentation matters

Documentation provides current, accurate context. Without it, models use outdated or incomplete training data. Documentation helps models understand things like:

- Current APIs and parameters
- Best practices
- Organization conventions
- Domain terminology

And much more. Read on to learn how to use documentation right in Cursor without having to context switch."

https://docs.cursor.com/guides/advanced/working-with-documentation

#AI #GenerativeAI #Cursor #TechnicalWriting #Documentation #SoftwareDevelopment #APIDocumentation #SoftwareDocumentation

Haunted manuals lightning talk

I gave a lightning #WriteTheDocs in Portland, and in this post I share the recording and my slide deck.

https://rinsemiddlebliss.com/posts/2025-05-16-haunted-manuals/

#TechnicalWriting

I've tried getting writing related work (specifically technical writing) for years and it's ultimately not exactly been as successful as I'd like. (One reason I run my blog, as a writing outlet/show my skills.) Reading about writers getting hired while using AI isn't encouraging.

#writing #technicalwriting

"Your voice must be heard. Inside of your work, you need key stakeholders and teams to know what it is that you do and the value you bring to product development. Your docs are vital infrastructure, but folks won’t realize that until it’s too late. Unless, of course, you become an ambassador of your craft and start making yourself heard and present everywhere. One of the first things I did when I joined a startup was sending an email to the team telling them what I did. It became my first post.

Outside of work, this task is equally important, because tech writing has a depth issue. You must develop a sense of pride in technical communication as a vital discipline. Don’t shy away from intellectual engagement and contribute to the field by sharing your own thoughts, theories, and errors. Some career ladders label that as “thought leadership”. It’s really about showing up and owning the conversation around what we do and why it matters, moving beyond praxis to noesis."

https://passo.uno/how-to-grow-senior-tech-writer/

#TechnicalWriting #TechnicalWriter #TechnicalCommunication #LifeLongLearning #SoftwareDocumentation #DocsAsInfrastructure

🚨 BREAKING NEWS: #Embeddings, that ancient artifact from the dusty corners of ML, are apparently the unsung heroes of technical writing! 🤯 Who knew that connecting texts like a glorified game of connect-the-dots could revolutionize your mundane documentation? 💡 Thank you, Captain Obvious, for this revelation! 😂
https://technicalwriting.dev/ml/embeddings/overview.html #TechnicalWriting #MLRevolution #ConnectTheDots #DocumentationInsights #HackerNews #ngated

8 Light writer Taylor Keazirian argues in favor of maintaining a set of "living" documents as part of software development project efforts. Common misconceptions about software documentation are addressed and refuted with insights on what a minimal technical set of documents for a software project should look like.

"Mastering Technical Documentation"

https://8thlight.com/insights/mastering-technical-documentation

#programming #technicalwriting #softwaredevelopment #documentation

"Welcome to the State of Docs Report 2025, bringing together insights from documentation experts from across the industry.

This comprehensive report explores how teams track their docs’ success, the future of the industry, the ongoing impact of AI on documentation, and much more.
(...)
We received responses from 444 hands-on documentation experts — including technical writers, managers, engineers, support teams, designers, marketers, and developer advocates. This variety shows just how many teams are involved and invested in documentation today.

We also conducted interviews with a number of technical writers, engineers, and documentation leaders from across the tech industry to get their insights into specific areas — you can read quotes from them throughout the report.

TAKEAWAYS:

- 54% believe their docs generate at least as many leads as their marketing sites

- 42% think AI will let us build docs that intelligently adapt to user needs

- 46% of large companies have decentralized or hybrid docs teams"

https://www.stateofdocs.com/2025/

#TechnicalWriting #TechnicalCommunication #Documentation #SoftwareDocumentation #SoftwareDevelopment #AI #Marketing

Build a blog in Three Minutes with Three Commands

http://readbeanicecream.surge.sh/2025/05/02/build-your-blog-in-three-commands/

#technology #tech #technicalwriting #opensource #foss #linux #mkdocs #mkdocs_material #surge #web #websites #net #internet

I swear the document I'm editing keeps getting longer. #TechnicalWriting

Now that I have been writing tooling to programmatically work with our docs, I have become an evangelist for improving docs through code.

Reviewed a proposal for some docs maintenance tasks yesterday, and my immediate thoughts (and comments!) were about how we could write tooling to automate the tasks.

Maintenance is always the first thing to get skipped when feature work gets busy. Automating maintenance tasks means they happen even when teams don’t have time to do them.

#TechnicalWriting

Back on the topic of auditing code examples in our documentation, part 5 of my 8-part series dives deep into the data model we used to store metadata and the code examples.

I look at the types of queries this model enables, performance implications, and future iteration. Data modeling is one of my favorite exercises, and I'm happy with the outcome for this project!

#TechnicalWriting #DeveloperDocs

https://dacharycarey.com/2025/04/27/audit-model-code-example-metadata/

“When I say that tech writers should own the prompt that generates documentation, I mean two things: that they should design and maintain the prompts, and that they should spearhead docs automation initiatives themselves, as I suggested in my tech writing predictions for 2025. It’s not just about using LLMs at work or tolerating their existence: writers must lead the way and own the conversations with AIs around docs.

What Aikidocs aims at showing is that you can work with an LLM as you would with a tech savvy intern: you provide a style guide, concrete guidance, and source materials to get acceptable output on the other side of the black box. All the content created in those carefully fenced pens will follow your content strategy more than if you let opinionated tools do it for you.

It’s not vibe coding: it’s LLM surfing.”

https://passo.uno/build-tech-writing-tools-llms/

#TechnicalWriting #SoftwareDocumentation #AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs

I had a lovely meetup coffee to start the day with fellow technical writers. Thank you to Swapnil for organising it.

#write_the_docs #TechnicalWriting #WTD #Melbourne