Five takeaways from AI the Docs
Our AI expert and Information Architect shares five takeaways from an AI conference she attended in June 2025.
I recently attended AI the Docs, a conference organised by API the Docs. Once again, the message was clear: AI is not just another tool in the documentation toolkit. It’s changing the very foundation of how we create, structure, and deliver content. It’s also changing the way the content is used and understood.
While the event had a strong focus on API documentation, the insights apply to anyone involved in technical writing, product development, or content strategy. Here are some key takeaways that resonated strongly with me.
1. Documentation is becoming an active infrastructure
Traditionally, documentation has been static, something people read. Today, it's becoming interactive, executable, and integral to AI-powered workflows.
AI systems now:
- Interpret documentation in real time
- Use the docs to generate code, tests it, guide decisions, and even perform actions
- Parse, segment, vectorise, and summarise content on the fly
Documentation isn’t just the supporting content; it’s part of the product experience.
2. “Docs as Code” is evolving into “Docs as Context”
In the age of AI, the most important thing is context: giving AI systems the right information, in the right structure, at the right time, with the right context so that the AI system can correctly understand the information.
This requires a new mindset:
- Write as if you're training an AI (clear inputs, expected outputs, and complete context)
- Think modular: break content into meaningful, self-contained chunks
- Enrich docs with semantic markers and metadata to make them findable and machine-readable
Structure is no longer optional, it's the backbone of machine understanding.
3. Technical writers are now architects of understanding
With AI consuming and acting on documentation, the role of the writer becomes more strategic. It’s no longer just about clear phrasing or formatting. It's about information architecture, intentionality, and responsibility.
Writers must decide:
- What to include, and just as importantly, what to leave out
- How to design content flows for both human readers and AI agents
- How to validate that AI systems interpret content safely and accurately
This positions technical writers as key contributors to the design of AI-powered user experiences.
4. Agents and the rise of “Agent Experience” (AX)
AI agents (autonomous systems that complete tasks) are becoming increasingly common. But they need well-structured, machine-readable input to function effectively.
The emerging field of Agent Experience (AX) asks: how can we design documentation so that agents interpret it correctly and take the right actions?
Good AX means:
- Giving agents the full picture, so they don’t guess or hallucinate
- Avoiding overload by providing structured summaries
- Using standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to connect docs to agents with less custom code
Technical Writers need to think not just about user experience, but about agent interpretability.
5. AI tools can assist, but humans still lead
While demos showed the power of tools like GitHub Copilot or custom LLM-based tools to assist with writing, structuring, and verifying content, they’re not perfect. Human oversight is essential.
That said, AI excels and can increase efficiency at:
- Repetitive, time-consuming tasks because it is so good at pattern recognition
- Code generation (at least first draft)
- Drafting and summarising, when provided with the right prompts and guardrails
The key is to combine human judgment with machine efficiency, using AI to speed up the process, not to replace the creativity, experience and knowledge of people.
Final thoughts: You can’t stop the wave, but you can learn how to surf
AI is already reshaping documentation. The question isn’t whether it will affect our work, it’s how we choose to respond.
As writers, our new challenge is to write for both humans and machines, to think like system architects, and to design documentation as a living, dynamic interface. That shift is already underway, and the most exciting part is that we get to help define it.
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Elzbieta Wiltenburg
Information Architect
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- at https://form.apsis.one/UDEqxSGsXMid