How I Documented an Entire Product in 4 Days with an AI Agent

This title could be clearer and more informative.Try out Clickbait Shieldfor free (5 uses left this month).

A developer documents 55 pages of end-user documentation for a Tauri desktop app in four days using Goose, an open-source AI agent. The workflow involved building three reusable 'skills' (markdown instruction files): write-docs for voice/style/structure, doc-screenshots for automated screenshot capture via Peekaboo and OCR, and docs-preview for shareable deploy URLs. Screenshots were defined declaratively in a YAML manifest enabling full batch recapture when the UI changed. The agent read source code to understand features, while the author handled editorial decisions. Key lessons: encode conventions into skills rather than re-prompting, make screenshots reproducible via manifests, phase the work, and always review agent output.

#ai

#webdev

#ai-agents

#tauri

May 16•24m read time•From dev.to

Table of contents

The Problem Why an AI Agent The Plan The Three Skills I Built Working With the Agent, Not Watching It A Day-by-Day Walkthrough What Broke Along the Way What Worked Surprisingly Well By the Numbers What I Would Do Differently What You Can Take Away Making Docs Agent-Ready Automated Video Walkthroughs (Work in Progress)The Future: Documentation in an Agent-First World