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Comment by dethstrobe

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Comment by dethstrobe

I recently left Google. I made a post explaining why, if anyone is interested. (Warning: it's pretty long) https://dethstrobe.com/blog/20250522-google/

Anyway, the ball is currently in the employer's court and the idea of exchanging one faceless master for another doesn't immediately sound appealing, so I figured I'll try to solve a pain point that I've experienced for a while.

Full transparency: I don't have the MVP working just yet. But what I'm trying to do is gauge genuine demand for an idea before I go all in.

*What if we could generate documentation from tests?*

Having documentation become stale sucks. Keeping docs up to date is hard.

Tests already verify the actual behavior of your system, so they can't lie about what your code does. They're living documentation that's always in sync with reality.

What if we could turn tests into docs that non-technical team members can actually use, or even the public?

It'd be great for onboarding new team members, giving product documentation for everything that's already been implemented, and–assuming we can come up with some best practices on how to write these tests–can even help reduce help desk calls as public facing documentation can self update on every deploy.

And I think we can. I'm currently playing around with this, but the theory is I can use Playwright, create a custom reporter for it, and it'll generate markdown you can use in something like Docusaurus.

That's not the paid product. That'll be an open source library that I'll give away.

But what I want to know is, would you be interested in paying for a SaaS platform that will host the docs and have integrations with:

* Github - allow non-technical to make PRs to update copy (code is the source of truth)

* JIRA – Link to the original requirements and vice versa

* Google Doc style comments for collaborative feedback

* On-prem support if you're paranoid and want to keep your secret docs away from public eyes

Check out my totally original unique landing page if these pain points are something you can relate to and I'm looking for feedback on this idea. Does it have legs? Does this address a problem you see at your company? Do you want help writing better tests to have better documentation for your codebase?

Replies dethstrobe · 2025-06-16
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