How Promptless works

Promptless keeps your documentation current by connecting three pieces: triggers that signal when something changed, context sources that help Promptless understand the change, and doc collections that define where your documentation lives and where updates are published. This page explains how those pieces fit together.

Keeping documentation current is hard work. Context gets lost in handoffs, updates fall behind releases, and support teams keep answering the same questions because the docs trail the product. Promptless supports that work rather than replacing it: it drafts content in the voice of your existing docs, keeps screenshots in sync as your UI changes, and shows the citations and reasoning behind every suggestion so you can review and approve it quickly.

Overview

The diagram below shows how triggers, context sources, and doc collections connect to turn a change into a reviewed documentation update:

How the components work together

1

Triggers Initiate the Process

Triggers are the starting point for all documentation updates. They monitor various sources for events that might require documentation changes:

• Code Changes: Pull requests in GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab automatically trigger analysis when new features or fixes are introduced

• Team Communication: Slack messages and Microsoft Teams mentions can trigger documentation updates

Learn more in Configuring Promptless → Triggers.

2

Context Sources Enrich Promptless's Understanding

Context sources are read-only integrations that give Promptless real-time access to the business context behind a change:

• Project management: Linear issues and Jira tickets explain the requirements and rationale behind a feature

• Knowledge bases: Confluence and Notion pages carry specs, decisions, and existing product context

Context sources are optional, but they help Promptless draft suggestions that reflect why a change was made, not just what changed. Learn more in Configuring Promptless → Context Sources.

3

Doc Collections Receive the Update

Doc collections define where your documentation lives and where Promptless publishes updates:

• Docs as code: Your docs live in a Git repository and sync to a hosting provider like Fern, Mintlify, Docusaurus, and more

• Multiple collections: A single change can update more than one doc collection at once, so related docs stay in sync

Learn more in Configuring Promptless → GitHub Repos (Docs as Code).

Note

Context sources are queried in real time. Promptless processes your source code and conversations to generate suggestions and then discards them—it doesn’t retain that content. See Privacy Policy for exactly what Promptless does and doesn’t store.

How teams use Promptless

Promptless removes the manual overhead of keeping docs current while preserving the quality and accuracy your team needs. Teams use it to turn customer conversations into documentation updates, help technical writers keep pace with feature releases, and maintain documentation for fast-moving open-source projects.

• Vellum (YC W23) has Slack Connect channels with key customers. They use Promptless to automatically turn customer support conversations into documentation updates. Today, over 50% of Vellum’s docs PRs originate from Promptless, and 60% of their product and engineering team interacts with Promptless monthly to draft updates for features they own.
• Amplitude uses Promptless to help their tech writers keep up with documentation demands. Their technical writers were drowning in work, so they integrated Promptless to draft documentation for every feature release. Now engineers review the first draft of docs before sending them to customers, making the entire process faster and more collaborative.
• Basis, an AI agents platform for accounting (ofbasis.com), uses Promptless for their entire knowledge base. Promptless processes all their meeting recordings and automatically updates customer pages, internal guides for their fast-growing team, and customer-facing documentation all at once.
• Fortune 500 companies use Promptless to make technical writers more productive. Context is spread across Linear, Confluence, and Slack—Promptless automatically assembles the relevant information and drafts doc updates for every PR.
• Vitess, a CNCF graduated project, proves Promptless works in the open-source world. Since installing Promptless, 94% of their documentation updates have been drafted with Promptless—the tool has become essential to keeping their docs current as the project evolves.

See Promptless in Action

Vitess is a CNCF graduated project powering YouTube, Slack, and Square. Browse their docs commit history to see Promptless drafting documentation updates in real-time.

Core capabilities

Beyond the trigger-to-publish flow, Promptless includes capabilities that keep suggestions accurate and easy to trust:

• Voice Match: Fine-tunes a custom model based on your existing documentation style, so AI-generated content sounds natural and matches your established tone.
• Promptless Capture: Keeps product screenshots automatically in sync with your UI. When code changes impact a screenshot, Promptless detects which images need updating and regenerates them with your current interface.
• Screenshot Editor: Edit screenshots directly in the dashboard—crop, annotate, highlight UI elements, or add shapes and text. Changes are immediately available in your docs.
• Slack Listen: Passively monitors Slack channels you choose and automatically creates documentation suggestions when conversations become inactive. Perfect for Slack Connect customer channels or internal discussion threads.
• Promptless Citations: See exactly where each documentation change came from. Every update includes references to the specific GitHub files, Slack threads, or support conversations that informed it.

Tip

Ready to tune how triggers, context sources, and doc collections behave for your team? See Configuring Promptless, or contact us at help@gopromptless.ai for setup guidance.

Next steps

• Quickstart — connect your repositories, docs, communication tools, and context sources.
• Reviewing & editing Promptless PRs — see what happens when a suggestion lands and how to approve, edit, or dismiss it.
• Open-source quickstart — set Promptless up on a public repository through the free open-source program.