[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Theneo (YC W22) - Generate Stripe-Style A...
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Launch HN: Theneo (YC W22) - Generate Stripe-Style API Docs
Hi HN, we are Ana and Maria, co-founders of Theneo, an AI tool that
generates Stripe-like API docs (https://theneo.io/). Our ML models
take care of tedious manual work in generating and publishing API
docs, making them much easier to produce--less technically
demanding for writers, and less writing-intensive for developers.
Here's a demo video:
https://www.loom.com/share/792fc6008a914d068ff8b34994fbc467. I've
been working with APIs for the past seven years, and the
documentation process has been consistently the most painful.
Nobody wants to have to do it, it's filled with gruntwork and
repetition, and takes a ton of time. Developers are not technical
writers and documenting is never their priority, let alone making
docs look nice. But for the reader--often the very same developers,
when they're consuming others' work--it makes such a difference.
How many times have you just looked at the API doc and decided
"nope not going to integrate"? That was the case for me and my team
many times. Developer communities often complain that even the most
well-known companies' public API docs are incomprehensible, and
internal API docs are neglected even more. The gruntwork and
repetition are clues that there's room for software to do a lot of
this work, and particularly for ML models to help produce the
content. We want to allow anyone to create great docs without
having a whole team of writers and designers, so we researched what
makes Stripe, Square, and a few other API docs so great. First, it
was definitely the content. Second, it was the user-friendly
interface: layout, colors, scrolls, how easy it was to find
information and give feedback. We talked to developers and
technical writers to understand their pain points. Then we took all
that research along with Maria's experience as an ML Engineer at
Microsoft, Deepmind, Google, and Facebook to come up with Theneo, a
Technical Writer AI Assistant. Theneo is like having a technical
writer next to you. You upload your API collection (JSON, YAML,
etc.). Our models automatically load and analyze API requests,
methods, endpoints, request body, parameters, etc., then run some
quality checks (e.g. for grammar errors) and give you content
suggestions for the section names and descriptions. API docs
generated by Theneo are user-friendly, beautiful and interactive.
we automatically generate all of your API requests in multiple
languages and make it interactive for the reader. Here is an
example: https://app.theneo.io/demo/theneo For internal API docs,
we created several integrations that make it easy to create and
maintain API documentation: Postman Integration - you can pull all
of your collections and use them in Theneo; Github Actions - you
can define how and when you want API docs to be updated
automatically (https://github.com/marketplace/actions/theneo-api-
documentat... Visual Studio Code (coming soon) - by the end of this
month you will be able to create and preview your API documentation
right in your IDE. We do not use your private API docs for ML
training. You can see a quick overview of how our setup works
here: https://www.loom.com/share/792fc6008a914d068ff8b34994fbc467
We are coming up with a lot of new integrations and features to
make it easy for developers to generate and maintain internal or
public-facing API docs. We would love to hear from you, what you
are currently using, what you love or don't love about those
solutions, what stops you from having high-quality docs for your
APIs, and anything else you'd like to share!
Author : arobakid
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-03-18 10:59 UTC (12 hours ago)
| csmpltn wrote:
| Could you add a way for people to test the product without paying
| you anything or providing you with any details? A section in your
| website where I can paste some API declaration I have laying
| around, and can see the docs you'll generate for me?
|
| I really need a quick way to test whether this holds any water,
| and I don't want to provide you with my details to do it. If it
| doesn't work for my simple example, it won't work for my larger
| project - and I don't want to waste that time to begin with.
|
| The best way to beat skepticism is to let people try the tech out
| and see for themselves that it actually works. There's too much
| "hotdog/not hotdog" tech in this space already.
|
| Edit: I see there's a tiny "try free" button hiding at the bottom
| of the page. After clicking that, you're asked to provide your
| personal details. Then you're redirected to a page where you're
| suddenly asked to pay 20$ and sign-up with your credit card. This
| is pure nonsense. Enough with these dark patterns already.
| arobakid wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, and I understand your concern. We are
| working on building a preview and editor version that users can
| play around with without having to register. It is in
| development phase, but for now you can reach out to us, share
| your public api collection or sample one, we can quickly
| generate it for you and show you a final version. Here is one
| of the sample API doc for reference
| https://app.theneo.io/demo/ml
| arobakid wrote:
| To follow up on the try free button, we have a free 7 day
| trial, you should not be asked to pay $20, its a 7 day trial
| which you can cancel anytime. If you were asked to pay $20
| right away please share with out support. Thanks
| chipgap98 wrote:
| This is unnecessary friction in attracting users. You should
| find a way to let people signup without a credit card.
| irakli-lezhava wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| kazanz wrote:
| I've been looking for a tool like this for the last month. I was
| going to use Redoc.ly but the interface is unintuitive to the
| point of being unusable. So I signed up for Theneo immediately...
|
| Unfortunately whenever I import my Open-API spec to Theneo I get
| a success message, but it never becomes a usable collection.
|
| Can you help me out?
| arobakid wrote:
| Hi there, so sorry to hear about the OpenApi spec issue. Please
| message us on intercom and we will have a look at it right
| away.
| andriashonia wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| adamhearn wrote:
| Do you own the url theneo.com? I noticed the documentation for
| the demo [0] uses this url, but the url doesn't redirect to your
| site.
|
| [0] - https://app.theneo.io/demo/theneo/theneo_api_reference
| pypy1 wrote:
| datval wrote:
| Do you guys plan on any more integrations besides postman?
| Migrating documentation is little challenging and streamlining
| this would be helpful.
| arobakid wrote:
| Hi there, very soon we will be releasing the Visual Studio Code
| extension followed by other IDE extensions. We already have
| Github actions but are planning to expand more (scanning the
| entire repo etc) and add Gitlab integration as well. If you
| have anything else in mind please share it with us and our team
| will consider it.
| dshain wrote:
| Congrats! I'm just enjoying Theneo. Now I can use my API doc
| screenshot as wallpaper to my phone ;d Keep going! <3.14159
| arobakid wrote:
| he he thanks, so happy to hear that you like your API doc.
| Maria_Do wrote:
| thanks so much @dshain!
| vincentmarle wrote:
| I've been looking for something like this, but it seems to be
| missing a crucial feature: automatic SDK generation. Writing and
| maintaining SDKs is a lot of work for a small team. Great
| documentation is one part of a good developer experience, the
| other one is creating easy-to-try SDKs. Is this on the roadmap?
| arobakid wrote:
| Hi there, thanks for your feedback. At this stage we are
| concentrating on automating and improving the quality of the
| API docs, but we are planning later to expand to SDKs as well.
| poshkman wrote:
| I love the product. And I have listened to the founders on
| several Georgian podcasts. They are super inspiring!
| Maria_Do wrote:
| Thanks so much, it means a lot to us that you follow our
| journey!
| marikhomeriki wrote:
| [deleted]
| gmeliva wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| naiv wrote:
| You can easily generate API docs for free with Redoc
| (https://redocly.github.io/redoc/) , SwaggerUI
| (https://swagger.io/tools/swagger-ui/) and many more so I am on
| the other side and think the the pricing is too high, especially
| the premium to use a custom domain.
|
| What is the advantage of using your product to what is available
| for free except some CSS tweaks?
| arobakid wrote:
| Hi there, thanks for the feedback. At Theneo we are working on
| automating the entire process of documenting and maintaining
| the API doc. Our goal is that developers can easily have the
| entire doc (including the content) ready. Right now those
| mentioned companies are giving a tool to build the API doc but
| developers still need to write the spec, come up with the
| content and text needed to make the API Doc readable. Basically
| at Theneo we are working on taking care of that as well.
| samtuke wrote:
| We are fans of the clean docs experience this produces. Works
| great with Postman.
| arobakid wrote:
| Happy to hear, we also launched Github integration, would love
| to hear your feedback.
| Maria_Do wrote:
| Hi samtuke, we are glad to hear postman integration was useful
| for you!
| sdolidze3 wrote:
| guatabidze wrote:
| Maria_Do wrote:
| Giviberidze wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| rsstack wrote:
| Do you support GraphQL APIs?
|
| ETA: It would be helpful if you would have an example of the APIs
| where you highlight what was manually done by a person and what
| was automatically generated. The example docs
| (https://app.theneo.io/demo/theneo/theneo_api_reference) look
| like any API documentation system, it isn't clear what's your
| product's added value.
|
| Edit 2: I just watched Ana's video from your post here, that's
| not on your homepage. It is 10x better than your homepage at
| explaining what you do :) I'm sold.
| arobakid wrote:
| Hey there, yes we support GraphQL, though this week we
| experienced a bug with importing and we are working on
| resolving it.
|
| So happy that you watched the video, we need to improve our
| landing page for sure, we've been so concentrated on the
| product itself, we forgot about the landing page :D
| buttsmcbutts wrote:
| Damn these docs are gorgeous. Is there a free plan I can play
| around with? Would love to import some docs on this platform
| arobakid wrote:
| Thank you, happy to hear you like the published version. We
| have a free 7 day trial, feel free to get started with that.
| Let us know how your experience goes and if needed we can
| expand your trial period.
| tatocaster wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| youdjidane wrote:
| love the product, highly recommend
| arobakid wrote:
| Thanks, happy to see you love the product ^_^
| Natikuda wrote:
| nyellin wrote:
| Hey, I'm possibly a target customer (not sure) and I don't know
| what stripe-style means.
|
| Just a single data point, but perhaps reconsider how you describe
| it.
|
| We develop an open source observability and automation platform
| for Kubernetes and our docs are at
| https://docs.robusta.dev/master/
|
| Key questions for me:
|
| * Can we easily migrate from Sphinx and RST?
|
| * What do the docs look like?
|
| * Can we make documenting non rest APIs more interactive? (E.g
| our yaml automations)
| Maria_Do wrote:
| Hi nyellin, Here is our sample doc:
| https://app.theneo.io/demo/theneo Thanks for watching the
| video!
| nyellin wrote:
| There's a video? I just meant reading the homepage and
| looking at the example docs!
|
| Regardless, looks cool. Thanks
| nyellin wrote:
| Ah just sat the demo. Cool
| wizwit999 wrote:
| I like what you're doing but, as your target customer, to be
| honest, your docs don't look very beautiful, despite that being
| your selling point!
|
| Also, I'm not sure what the ML does here, is it like input open
| Api model -> output doc?. I'm sure you have to still add
| information manually.
|
| Congrats on the launch!
| arobakid wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, here is one of the sample API docs
| https://app.theneo.io/demo/ml
|
| We would love to hear your feedback and see how we can improve
| the published API doc and make it more beautiful
|
| Regarding the ML, what we have is a technical writer AI
| assistant, that analyzes the API collections, gives
| suggestions, and the goal is that in just a few clicks to have
| the entire API doc ready.
| treis wrote:
| >We would love to hear your feedback and see how we can
| improve the published API doc and make it more beautiful
|
| The words are wrapping across lines in the link you gave.
| "asc is ascending and sorts from a to z." Looks like:
|
| asc is ascending and sort
|
| s from a to z.
| MariamLekv wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| ninutsan wrote:
| Aeolun wrote:
| Pricing this by user seems a bit weird. If you are going to do
| usage based pricing shouldn't you price by size of the API?
|
| I dunno, my API stays the same, but because we have 25 employees
| instead of 5 we pay a 5x premium?
| arobakid wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. We are still exploring the optimal
| pricing model for our users. For now, we have used similar
| models to what our users used in Postman, Swagger. Having said
| that feel free to reach out to us and we can help with the
| onboarding process and set up the pricing structure that would
| make sense for your team.
| waska14 wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| jn31415 wrote:
| Do you happen to be hiring for customer support?
| arobakid wrote:
| Hi there, we do not but feel free to send us an email and we
| will keep it mind.
| techtitan2000 wrote:
| How does this compare to https://readme.io?
|
| Seems like a less developed version of it?
| gkoberger wrote:
| Hey! ReadMe founder here. I'm always excited to have other
| companies working on docs :)
|
| I haven't met Ana and Maria yet (hopefully will!), but it does
| seem like we both agree documentation is incredibly important
| for APIs. Based on what I've seen, ReadMe thinks about things a
| bit differently. Our goal isn't to just display all the info
| about your API, but rather make your API easy to use, debug,
| etc. Our docs are interactive, know things about your users,
| etc. We want the docs to be the full UI/UX for your API.
|
| So, tl;dr = similar problem, and hopefully you check us both
| out :)
|
| (Also, $170k later, we're ReadMe.com instead of .io these
| days!)
| buttsmcbutts wrote:
| slightly annoyed you didn't do read.me
| Maria_Do wrote:
| Hey @gkoberger,
|
| > I haven't met Ana and Maria yet (hopefully will!)
|
| - We will take you up on this :)
|
| > Also, $170k later, we're ReadMe.com these days
|
| - Congrats!
| Maria_Do wrote:
| We are definitely a lot younger than Readme, no denying that ;)
| We also are approaching the docs with different intent.
| @gkoberger outlined here their goals. We certainly focus on
| making the documenting process as easy as possible. You can
| spend minimal time and still generate very high-quality
| documentation. So you have no excuse not to document ;)
| leirbagarc wrote:
| Really nice product! Documentation in a new level!
| jaequery wrote:
| The demo page is just blank
| ellinokon wrote:
| Almost the same for me using Brave, but the website pops in
| after ~30 seconds.
| agigao wrote:
| NinoDvalidze wrote:
| arobakid wrote:
| Hakeemmidan wrote:
| Your pricing seems way too low (in my opinion). Creating API docs
| is not very common, so your customers might not be that many. So
| you need to be more aggressive on pricing to stay sustainable.
| But I could be totally wrong.
|
| Also, on an unrelated side note, SEO seems very important here
| (for public facing API docs), so I'd put some emphasis on that as
| well. Good search mechanisms are also of great help in API docs.
| So I'd try to knock that out of the park as well.
| arobakid wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. We are still experimenting with the
| pricing and what would make sense to our users. Regarding SEO,
| I 100% agree with you. Next week we are releasing a feature
| that enables companies to customize the URLs, optimize API doc
| SEO
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Your pricing seems way too low (in my opinion). Creating API
| docs is not very common, so your customers might not be that
| many.
|
| Inclined to disagree on this one. I feel like creating API docs
| is uncommon largely because the tools are bad (and what tools
| do exist tend to be expensive). I think success for this kind
| of company might involve creating a market for documentation by
| lowering the barrier to entry.
| Maria_Do wrote:
| Hi Hakeemmidan, thanks so much for the feedback! Compared to
| the price of other tools in this space and/or price of a
| technical writer our price is definitely a lot lower. Besides
| creating the doc, we also offer user analytics and make it easy
| to auto-update etc, so we provide value in staying our platform
| with the monthly subscription. We also share the opinion that a
| lot of APIs currently are undocumented due to tools being
| tedious, and we want to change that.
| Hakeemmidan wrote:
| Best of luck! ( ^__^ )/*
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