Keep localized docs current

Tip

You can set this up by hand as this page describes, or ask Promptless in Slack or Microsoft Teams to do it for you. For example, “@Promptless watch my English-language docs directory for changes, and use those changes to update my localized docs.” See Ask Promptless to update your configuration.

When your docs ship in more than one language, the translated pages are the first to fall behind whenever source content changes. Most teams author in one language — commonly English — and mirror it into the others. This page applies the trigger-plus-instructions pattern to that job: you point a trigger at the directory you author in, and Promptless drafts translated updates for the rest of your documentation.

Caution

AI-assisted drafting speeds the work, but it doesn’t remove the need for human review. Idiom, tone, terminology, and locale conventions are easy to get subtly wrong, so a person reviews the translated output before it ships (see step 3 below).

Note

There are no native localization settings in Promptless. You assemble this from two ingredients — a trigger that decides when Promptless runs, and a workflow written as instructions that describes what it does — the same pattern documented for custom tasks.

Pair a trigger with translation instructions

1. Scope a trigger to your source-language directory. On the Configuration page, open the Triggers tab, choose Add a trigger, and pick GitHub commits. A commit trigger runs when new commits are pushed to a branch, regardless of whether those commits were in PRs. Expand More filters (optional), then under Only when files in these folders change enter the path you author in, such as docs/en, and press Enter to add it. Only commits that contain changes to those folders trigger documentation updates, so a commit touching just the translated directories doesn’t match.

2. Write the translation instructions in PROMPTLESS.md. The trigger decides when Promptless runs, but the instructions are your preferences for how Promptless should handle those localization tasks. PROMPTLESS.md lives in your Agent Knowledge Base and is loaded into the agent’s instructions on every run, so a rule you record there is visible every time. Name the directory you author in, the directories to update, and any terms to leave in the source language. For example, “docs/en is the documentation source directory. Localize changes into docs/es and docs/ja, and keep product names untranslated.” See Teach Promptless a custom task for the “If, then” hook format and where longer workflows live.

3. Review the drafted updates. Promptless opens a suggestion with the translated changes. Have someone fluent in the target language review and publish it. Unlike a source-language edit, you can’t judge a translation’s correctness from the diff alone.

Teach translation conventions with feedback

Plan to refine your translation instructions across the first few suggestions rather than landing them on the first run, especially when you maintain several target languages or are catching up a stale backlog. Product names, terms of art, and phrases you deliberately leave untranslated need to come out the same way every time. When you correct a translation, teach the convention with feedback and check Remember this feedback for future suggestions so it shapes what Promptless proposes next time, not just this once. Promptless records what it learns — which terms stay in the source language, or how a feature name is rendered — in your Agent Knowledge Base.

Catch up translations that are already behind

The trigger-plus-instructions pattern is event-driven: it acts on new commits and does not retroactively scan pages that are already out of date. For one-time, corpus-wide work, use Deep Analysis, which takes free-text instructions and returns a coordinated set of suggestions. Once you’re current, new commits to your source-language directory start a run as usual.

Publish translated updates automatically

Start by reviewing localization PRs, but consider turning on auto-merge once you trust the output. On the Policies tab of the Configuration page, add a rule scoped to your translation trigger and turn on both Open a pull request automatically and Merge the pull request automatically. Auto-merge requires automatic PR creation to also be enabled, and it’s available only for GitHub commit triggers. A policy rule scopes to a single trigger, so full automation stays where you want it. With the GitHub (read-only) app, which covers public repositories only, Promptless opens PRs from a fork, so confirm the automation behaves the way you expect before you rely on it.

Caution

Auto-merge on a trigger applies to every target locale that trigger drafts for, so it publishes all of them without per-change review. Turn it on only once a reviewer fluent in each of those languages trusts Promptless’s output for all of them — to automate some locales while still reviewing others, scope a separate trigger per locale. Either way, treat it as a deliberate choice rather than a default.

Translation management systems

Promptless localizes content based on the instructions you provide, but there is no documented integration with a translation management system (TMS) such as Phrase, Crowdin, or Lokalise. If your team runs a TMS and wants Promptless to hand off to it rather than draft the content itself, contact us at help@gopromptless.ai to discuss your requirements.