Launch HN: Promptless (YC W25) – Automatic updates for customer-facing docs

This idea is cool and well-scoped to a specific pain point that can be solved today. This is something that I think we need more of when it comes to YC batches.

However, you all should publish pricing before launching, and forcing me to book a call with you to use it is a nonstarter for me.

I don't want to get tied to this tool and then be charged for it in some weird way; give me your v0 pricing so that I can pay for it in a transparent way. As a fellow founder, I think you also know how little time I have for calls to check out demos for tools. So, just let me sign up and give it a spin.

>> and since no developer enjoys updating docs

They may be rare, but this is not universally true! I have a staff developer who creates beautiful documentation, paired with hand drawn (tablet) diagrams. I never miss an opportunity to complement & thank him for his work, he really seems to enjoy it and it goes well with the role's mandate to level-up other developers. If you find a developer (especially a senior+) who likes to create and maintain documentation, treat them like gold!

As a solo-maintainer of an open source project who begs the community (to no avail) to submit PRs for the docs from their perspective, this project is definitely something I would use. I will give it a test drive over the next few days. Don't want to sound like a freeloader but are you planning on offering some sort of concessions/discounts for OSS projects? Maybe we can configure it with our own keys to take some cost off of you for our projects?

Can it be attached to Discord? One of the most annoying things I find is the loss of precious info in there. Even when channels are not removed or entire servers disappear, the search is so bad that no one (...) bothers and just re-asks.

kinda surprising to see basically just LLM wrappers still getting funded/interest. Neat idea obviously and nice to have, but that's sort of it. Fundamentally misses mark on what you can do already without AI (running tests on your actual doc code examples etc), and fact that any of the AI IDEs could turn part of this one with single switch to just append a doc friendly update to a commit. To think that soon we have ai agents reading ai generated docs instead of code to reduce it back down to code...

Very real problem. We have started to worry about how to maintain the many cookbook samples and tutorials, we wrote/are planning on writing. Going over every user facing artefact after a code change is a non-starter, so you opt for versioning these things as they'll necessary become out of date. Very excited to give this a spin soon.

How do you know the updated docs are correct? And what about the issue where doc training itself favors content near the beginning of the doc, but the salient facts might be near the end?

I'm curious, does it get triggered when a PR is opened or when it is merged? Because if it is when it is opened, updates to the PR could still get made which I assume would cause updates to the doc changes. Also, what if 2 PRs are opened at the same time? What if a PR is opened but never merged?

Very needed! I’ve worked on platform teams and API docs were always rushed last second to push out a release—-but in many ways they are the product.

Another pain point was creating guides/examples for integrating 3rd party tools. Could be worth exploring

Looks great - well done!

Can you clarify the slack integration? I see you've mentioned it, but I'm unclear on the workflow.

A use-case I've thought about previously is support discussions we have on our slack channel, which indicate that we need to update our docs.

Is Promptless able to raise a PR with suggested updates on docs, based on question/answers in our support channels?

Pricing? Whats bespoke about it? Whats your pricing metric?

This is really cool, congrats on launch!

I am curious how you prevent private data from getting leaked to the auto-generated public docs. I imagine this problem does not exist in open source projects, but would become an issue if not everything discussed in company's private messenger should be used as context for generating docs.

Congrats on the launch. This looks great. I could see this being useful for internal documentation at larger companies too

I would like to have an AI agent in web app that would have source code access and enough knowledge to explain how the app should be used.

That could be tied up with product walkthroughs so applications would give you a demo on its own and would be always up to date.

> no developer enjoys updating docs

I must be weird ;)

I would be OK with AI doing it as long as it is more like dependabot and asks for a PR like everyone else.

Untruths is the biggest issue but then docs mislead anyway due to getting out of date.

This is cool. I’ve been working on a similar product but with Changelog focus (productsync.io). Happy to chat if interested, you can reach me from murat at productsync.

This is super useful! Have you considered generating docs based on customer support in Slack or Discord conversations?

Congrats on the launch! Would love to chat sometime on getting a Mintlify integration going.

This is awesome! If you email me (greg@readme.io), we should do something together!

Looks cool! Super minor note -- your footer still says (c) 2024

This looks great, can't wait to try it out!

Congratulations on Launch

Aside, but what do you recommend for internal docs? Particularly if your internal docs are all Markdown?

What's the use case?

this is awesome

That's a fascinating concept, automatic updates for customer-facing documents.

* This could revolutionize how we manage information.

* Think of the time saved, no more manual updates.

* Customer satisfaction would likely increase.

* Accuracy in documentation becomes a focus.

Could this be the end of outdated manuals?