Overview
Triggers are events that initiate automated documentation updates in Promptless. When a trigger event occurs, Promptless analyzes the context and determines if documentation updates are needed.
Available trigger types
Section titled “Available trigger types”How triggers work
Section titled “How triggers work”When a trigger event occurs:
- Event Detection: Promptless receives notification of the event (PR opened, message posted, etc.)
- Context Analysis: The system analyzes the event content, including code changes, conversations, or support interactions
- Relevance Assessment: Promptless determines if the event requires documentation updates
- Suggestion Creation: If relevant, Promptless creates documentation suggestions based on the trigger content and connected context sources
Configure triggers
Section titled “Configure triggers”Triggers are configured in your organization’s Configuration page using the triggers section of your promptless.yaml file. For each trigger, you can:
- Specify which repositories or channels to monitor
- Configure trigger-specific settings (e.g., directory filters, branch targeting)
- Set up publishing behavior through policy rules
See the Configuration Reference for the complete YAML schema.
Automatic PR creation
Section titled “Automatic PR creation”When automatic PR creation is enabled in your publishing policies, Promptless automatically creates pull requests in your documentation repository with suggested changes. For commit triggers, you can optionally enable auto-merge to automatically merge documentation PRs as soon as they’re created.
Automatic PR creation is available for all Git-hosted documentation platforms.
Trigger events in documentation PRs
Section titled “Trigger events in documentation PRs”When Promptless creates a pull request for documentation updates, it automatically includes a list of the trigger events that led to those changes in the PR description. This provides valuable context for reviewers and creates clear traceability between documentation updates and their originating events.
Backfill suggestions
Section titled “Backfill suggestions”Backfill suggestions lets you run Promptless on pull requests that already exist, so you can catch up on documentation for work that merged before a trigger was watching. It’s available on saved pull request and merge request triggers: GitHub PRs, GitLab merge requests, and Bitbucket PRs.
Open the Backfill suggestions panel on a trigger row, choose a window of the last 14 days, last 30 days, or last 90 days, and select Preview. The preview lists the pull requests opened or merged in that window that the trigger matches, applying the same repository, topic, directory, and branch filters it uses for live events. When a trigger scopes repositories by GitHub topic (the Trigger on repos with certain topics option, covered in Repository topics), the preview lists pull requests only from repositories that carry a matching topic. Backfill covers up to 1,000 pull requests per repository in the window.
Backfill matches pull requests that were opened or merged but it doesn’t replay historical approvals. A trigger that fires only on first approval returns no backfill results because approval matching applies only to live events going forward.
When the preview looks right, select Launch backfill to run it. Promptless processes each pull request live, exactly as it does for a new event: your publishing policy applies, so backfilled pull requests can create documentation PRs and send notifications. The panel updates with progress as the run works through the list.