Chapter 16: AI tools and API documentation
LLM-based AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude, can help you with various documentation-related tasks. Pattern-based content prompts can help arrange content in expected documentation formats. You can use AI tools to both learn code and write code yourself–the latter comes in handy when you need to create build and publishing scripts. You can use AI tools to get language advice, to identify answers when fixing bugs, to analyze large sets of information from threads, comments, and feedback, to compare API responses with schemas, to create glossaries, and more. Using AI tools requires you to provide a lot of direction, review, and guidance, so don’t expect too much from them. Still, they can perform some of the documentation work, leading to increased productivity.
About Tom Johnson
I'm a technical writer / API doc specialist based in the Seattle area. In this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, visual communication, information architecture, writing techniques, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation if you're looking for more info about that. If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the field, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.
150/178 pages complete. Only 28 more pages to go.