Writing good documentation is hard. It takes time, effort, and often gets pushed aside in favor of more exciting coding work. Google knows this, and now it’s trying to make things easier for open source maintainers who are strapped for time and resources. This week, the search giant introduced two new open source tools meant to take some of the pain out of the documentation process.
The first is called Docs Advisor. It’s a straightforward guide that helps project maintainers come up with a clear documentation strategy. Whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to fix a mess of half-written pages, this guide walks you through every part of the process. You’ll get help figuring out what your users need, what your team can actually deliver, and how to make docs that are useful instead of just words on a screen. It even includes a template to keep you on track.
Then there’s the second resource, Documentation Project Archetypes. That one is basically a collection of field guides. It breaks down thirteen common types of documentation projects, showing what each one is for, what problems it solves, and how to pull the right people together to get it done. There are archetypes for everything from writing a new user guide to migrating an entire site. It’s all about making documentation work feel more manageable and less overwhelming.
Both tools are built on lessons learned from Google’s Season of Docs program, which ran from 2019 through 2024. Over 130 open source projects participated, and they collectively wrote more than 200 case studies. The docs weren’t always perfect, but the lessons were valuable. Instead of letting that knowledge gather dust, Google worked with Daniel Beck and Erin Kissane to turn it into something maintainers could actually use.
The Docs Advisor pulls insights from those case studies along with interviews from real maintainers and writers. It even ties in the archetypes to help you plan better. And speaking of those archetypes, Daniel Beck previewed one of them earlier this year during a talk at FOSDEM. There are more demos and discussions in the pipeline, including a possible session at Open Source Summit Europe.
There’s also a creative side to the project. Artist Heather Cummings is developing illustration cards for some of the archetypes. A few are already online, including ones for The Edit, The Audit, and The Factory.
This all comes down to one goal. Google wants to take the hard-earned experience of past open source projects and turn it into guidance others can build on. If you maintain an open source project, these new tools might help you turn your documentation from a dreaded chore into something that actually helps your users.
If you want to explore further or share feedback, you can head to the Open Docs repo on GitHub.
