I and my team did a full set of documentation for handing over a codebase to the client. A large complex codebase with accumulated history and subtle reasons why things were done.
Diataxis was fantastic. It took a bit of effort to work out what the page titles were to cover everything we needed, but then when you were writing a page it was glorious.
It was so clear what you were saying and what "voice" you were writing in. If it's a Reference page you're all descriptive, with diagrams and bullet points. When it's a guide you're more discursive, but you know you're just imparting information not trying to teach. It made it so much easier to be coherent and clear about everything.
I’ve been loving Diataxis! My agents follow guidance that links to reference files must be one way only. Forces the how-to and tutorials to stay DRY and point to one source of truth reference. Ideally long form tutorials can be composed how-tos. Also to cut long reference files to a smaller focused one and link from the main.
I love whenever this comes up. It’s a great framework for thinking about and writing docs.
It’s hard to keep documentation up to date, however, and I find that items like tutorials and reference materials (unless generated off versioned code) can drift pretty far over time.
A feature I like in concept that notion introduced with wikis ages ago was a “verification” timestamp, where you specify a timeframe after which the doc owner has to reconfirm that the doc is up to date. A bit too easy to rubber stamp, unfortunately, but maybe if it took the doc offline entirely without a more robust audit.
We just invested a good amount of time restructuring our docs for Diátaxis. It was helpful, but I wouldn't take it as gospel. The important thing to remember is that each piece of content should be one of the four types.
If you're embarking upon a refactoring / rewriting journey for your docs, the only advice I'd share is to actually read the website beginning to end before starting. Especially this page: https://diataxis.fr/complex-hierarchies/. The guide is (unsurprisingly) very well written, and it's easy to internalize the concepts because they're repeated often.
I never saw the point in Diataxis, but honestly while vibe coding it's pretty convenient to tell an LLM "do diataxis" and get decent first pass documentation out of it.
Ive been aware of diataxis for a while, but i hadnt considered such an approach. Will definitely keep it in mind for when im ready to generate some sort of docs. Thanks!
I love seeing this pop up again. Our customer support team has been steadily moving all of our docs over to Diátaxis for a while and it's been a really nice improvement.
Another documentation model: Fabrizio's seven actions [0]. People read docs to appraise, understand, explore, practice, remember, develop, and troubleshoot, usually in that order.
It feels so natural and obvious compared to Diataxis' forced abstractions, where I'm still left wondering "what's the difference between a tutorial and a how-to guide?"
But! I'm glad for anything that helps people organize and maintain docs.
> ...where I'm still left wondering "what's the difference between a tutorial and a how-to guide?"
I don't find this question difficult. Without looking anything up, a tutorial exercises a contrived example for learning purposes, whereas a how-to guide provides instructions suitable for real world execution.
How to guide is for things which you want to do, probably not without going in depth or understanding the technicalities.
Example in our codebase
- How to clear the cache ?
- How to configure the logger ?
I liked the idea of separating our how to guides and explanations / tutorials, because sometimes you just want engineers to follow a specific flow without going too much in depth.
Diataxis was fantastic. It took a bit of effort to work out what the page titles were to cover everything we needed, but then when you were writing a page it was glorious.
It was so clear what you were saying and what "voice" you were writing in. If it's a Reference page you're all descriptive, with diagrams and bullet points. When it's a guide you're more discursive, but you know you're just imparting information not trying to teach. It made it so much easier to be coherent and clear about everything.
It’s hard to keep documentation up to date, however, and I find that items like tutorials and reference materials (unless generated off versioned code) can drift pretty far over time.
A feature I like in concept that notion introduced with wikis ages ago was a “verification” timestamp, where you specify a timeframe after which the doc owner has to reconfirm that the doc is up to date. A bit too easy to rubber stamp, unfortunately, but maybe if it took the doc offline entirely without a more robust audit.
If you're embarking upon a refactoring / rewriting journey for your docs, the only advice I'd share is to actually read the website beginning to end before starting. Especially this page: https://diataxis.fr/complex-hierarchies/. The guide is (unsurprisingly) very well written, and it's easy to internalize the concepts because they're repeated often.
There is a real problem there, and that page doesn't do a good enough job of dealing with it. I have something cooking that is much, much better.
https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview
In particular, it made it seem obvious to split up the documentation between:
- Overview --- readme.md
- Tutorials --- handled in various template files
- How to Guides --- embedded in the Literate Program code
- Reference --- the indices and Command Glossary
Huge fan of Diataxis over the years!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42325011
Update: https://diataxis.fr/colophon/#origins-and-development (Divio came first).
Really curious what the major differences are that have you preferring it over other methods / winging it.
[1]: https://c4model.com/
It feels so natural and obvious compared to Diataxis' forced abstractions, where I'm still left wondering "what's the difference between a tutorial and a how-to guide?"
But! I'm glad for anything that helps people organize and maintain docs.
[0] https://passo.uno/seven-action-model/
I don't find this question difficult. Without looking anything up, a tutorial exercises a contrived example for learning purposes, whereas a how-to guide provides instructions suitable for real world execution.
Example in our codebase
- How to clear the cache ?
- How to configure the logger ?
I liked the idea of separating our how to guides and explanations / tutorials, because sometimes you just want engineers to follow a specific flow without going too much in depth.