[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Promptless (YC W25) - Automatic updates f...
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Launch HN: Promptless (YC W25) - Automatic updates for customer-
facing docs
Hi HN! I'm Prithvi, and my co-founder Frances and I built
Promptless (https://gopromptless.ai), an AI teammate that
proactively updates docs while you ship software. There's a demo
video at https://youtu.be/pmslSl8dOgE, and also a "Live Demo on
Your Own Docs" at https://gopromptless.ai/demo where you can plug
in the URL to any existing docs site and simulate a "trigger event"
to see what Promptless would have suggested. We also opened up the
full product with automatic triggers for a free trial for HN this
week (if you sign up at https://gopromptless.ai/hn). We built
Promptless because we wished we had it, both as doc authors and doc
consumers. On the authoring side, I used to run engineering at a
fintech company, and since no developer enjoys updating docs, they
often went out-of-date and customers complained. On the consuming
side, when we write code, we regularly run into mistakes or
omissions in vendors' or dependencies' docs that slow us down.
(This pain seems to be getting more acute with AI coding
assistants, since they often rely blindly on docs.) Promptless can
be automatically triggered from new PRs or support tickets, or by
manually tagging @Promptless in Slack. It integrates via OAuth with
tools like Jira, Linear, and Notion, so that it has context about
the intent of each change or feature. It drafts new or updated docs
and can push them up to wherever docs live, like Readme, Mintlify,
Intercom, Zendesk, or a Github repo. How it works: when first
connected to your docs, it starts by reviewing each page and
building a "product ontology" that understands concepts, entities,
and resources, as well as the relationship between them. This can
take several minutes to an hour depending on the number of
articles. Then, when a new trigger event occurs (such as a new PR),
the Promptless agent initializes a session with several tools to
find relevant context and draft new or updated documentation. We
expected early users to be most excited about automatically
updating docs from new PRs, but we were surprised by other use
cases from customers. For example, one has a ton of Slack Connect
channels with customers, and our killer feature for them is being
able to trigger an update from Slack in one click from Slack.
Another has a content team separate from their product team, so for
them, being able to update guides when the product team publishes
release notes every two weeks is really valuable. Others value
Promptless because it makes their AI support agents (like
Intercom's Fin AI) perform better, since it makes the source
material more accurate and complete. We have also published
updates for several open-source projects (like Ansible, Prefect,
Ray, and Ollama). Some projects have >40% of recent commits being
doc updates/corrections, so having a product like Promptless that
automatically suggests those doc updates can make contributing a
lot easier and improve the DevEx for end-users. We'd love for you
to check us out, and we welcome any suggestions, requests,
questions, or criticism! Thank you for reading!
Author : prithvi2206
Score : 99 points
Date : 2025-02-18 17:30 UTC (1 days ago)
| smashah wrote:
| As a solo-maintainer of an open source project who begs the
| community (to no avail) to submit PRs for the docs from their
| perspective, this project is definitely something I would use. I
| will give it a test drive over the next few days. Don't want to
| sound like a freeloader but are you planning on offering some
| sort of concessions/discounts for OSS projects? Maybe we can
| configure it with our own keys to take some cost off of you for
| our projects?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Hey! We absolutely love to support open-source projects. Happy
| to chat with you to make sure that we can work within your
| budget as a solo maintainer.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| Congrats on the launch. This looks great. I could see this being
| useful for internal documentation at larger companies too
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Totally, that's part of the plan! Unsurprisingly, people are
| willing to invest more in customer-facing docs, but we're
| already some people using Promptless for "internal clients",
| where you have, say, a platform/data team that's publishing
| docs for other teams at a larger company.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Can it be attached to Discord? One of the most annoying things I
| find is the loss of precious info in there. Even when channels
| are not removed or entire servers disappear, the search is so bad
| that no one (...) bothers and just re-asks.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Exactly the right use-case. Discord has been requested a couple
| of times, and is coming soon! Happy to reach out when it's
| available.
| iknownthing wrote:
| I'm curious, does it get triggered when a PR is opened or when it
| is merged? Because if it is when it is opened, updates to the PR
| could still get made which I assume would cause updates to the
| doc changes. Also, what if 2 PRs are opened at the same time?
| What if a PR is opened but never merged?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Great questions! It is possible to get Promptless to run only
| when PRs are merged, or when commits are made on `main`, but
| pretty much everyone wants the doc updates to be drafted when
| PRs are opened, because they'd like to review the doc updates
| in parallel (i.e. before it's actually released). If two PRs
| are created at the same time, Promptless will review them
| separately (and potentially create two docs PRs, if both have
| customer-facing impact).
|
| Honestly, some of these workflow points are areas that we're
| probably going to adjust and add more configuration around. For
| example, some folks with very high commit velocity are asking
| for a "daily digest" docs PR from Promptless instead of
| individual docs PRs.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Why not have a flow that automatically adds/updates stuff to
| the PR itself?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| If you're asking about when there are new commits on the
| source code after a PR is opened, yes that's what happens!
| It just updates the existing docs branch.
|
| If you're asking if Promptless should just add doc updates
| to the same PR as the code PR, that's definitely an option,
| but people tend to just want them separate both because it
| fits better with their workflows and it's less contingent
| on CI/CD processes, if that makes sense.
| skylerwiernik wrote:
| Looks cool! Super minor note -- your footer still says (c) 2024
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Oops. Fixed. Thank you!
| ngalstyan4 wrote:
| This is really cool, congrats on launch!
|
| I am curious how you prevent private data from getting leaked to
| the auto-generated public docs. I imagine this problem does not
| exist in open source projects, but would become an issue if not
| everything discussed in company's private messenger should be
| used as context for generating docs.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Absolutely. There are steps in Promptless's agent flow that are
| designed to prevent this, but this is why users still review
| Promptless's suggestions to guides before committing/publishing
| them. I think people will still want to review Promptless's
| suggestions for a while, but the granularity of oversight will
| probably decrease as trust increases.
| paulgb wrote:
| This looks great, can't wait to try it out!
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Awesome!
| nextworddev wrote:
| What's the use case?
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| > no developer enjoys updating docs
|
| I must be weird ;)
|
| I would be OK with AI doing it as long as it is more like
| dependabot and asks for a PR like everyone else.
|
| Untruths is the biggest issue but then docs mislead anyway due to
| getting out of date.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Ha, I might also be weird. But yes it just opens PRs for doc
| updates, which still need to be reviewed. Maybe eventually
| people will want Promptless to be committing doc updates
| directly, but I still think human oversight is important for
| high-quality docs, both to prevent untruths but also to guide
| good information architecture.
| hahnbee wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! Would love to chat sometime on getting a
| Mintlify integration going.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Thanks! Some of our early customers use Mintlify (we're big
| fans), which is an easy integration since there's always a
| Github sync. Let's chat soon!
| bravura wrote:
| Aside, but what do you recommend for internal docs? Particularly
| if your internal docs are all Markdown?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Hmm, are you thinking about this in the context of, say, code
| documentation in Github repos, like README.md files? Or are
| there types of internal docs that you typically see in
| markdown?
| gkoberger wrote:
| This is awesome! If you email me (greg@readme.io), we should do
| something together!
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Will do Greg!
| davecyen wrote:
| Very needed! I've worked on platform teams and API docs were
| always rushed last second to push out a release---but in many
| ways they _are_ the product.
|
| Another pain point was creating guides/examples for integrating
| 3rd party tools. Could be worth exploring
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| For sure. It can be challenging to inculcate a culture of
| treating docs as a product, but since great docs can drive
| revenue growth and bad docs can increase churn, it's a very
| important mindset.
|
| In terms of creating guides/examples for third-party tools, do
| you have a particular use-case in mind? e.g. if you're
| something like Zapier with hundreds of connections?
| davecyen wrote:
| Re: 3rd party integrations, think glue code for enterprise
| platforms (I previously worked on the developer platform at
| Shopify).
|
| For example, a guide to integrate Shopify's Storefront API
| with Sanity CMS. These are usually a marketing/product thing
| more than developer docs... and almost always become obsolete
| after the next release and forgotten about.
|
| Would've loved to generate a bunch of these guides and then
| automatically keep them up-to-date with code examples, and
| help serve both purposes for growth and developer docs.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Yes, absolutely! Someone mentioned a similar situation
| where they had 100+ integration-specific landing pages in
| webflow (mostly for SEO) that became stale within months.
|
| Definitely would love to pick your brain more about this if
| interested. prithvi@gopromptless.ai
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| Have any of your customers provided case study information
| that would imply some reduction in churn or an increase in
| inbound leads or sales?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Yeah, great question! The earliest quantitative
| measurements people make are around how much time is being
| saved, but people are also measuring deflection rates in AI
| support chatbots (better docs => better support), which is
| strongly correlated with CSAT scores. Measuring reduction
| in churn or increased inbound takes several months to prove
| out, and we just haven't been around that long :)
|
| We'll definitely be posting some case studies in the coming
| weeks, though!
| bfeynman wrote:
| kinda surprising to see basically just LLM wrappers still getting
| funded/interest. Neat idea obviously and nice to have, but that's
| sort of it. Fundamentally misses mark on what you can do already
| without AI (running tests on your actual doc code examples etc),
| and fact that any of the AI IDEs could turn part of this one with
| single switch to just append a doc friendly update to a commit.
| To think that soon we have ai agents reading ai generated docs
| instead of code to reduce it back down to code...
| motoxpro wrote:
| Ironically, the common (used to be common?) trope about
| foundation models being picks and shovels and LLM wrappers
| having no values is probably backwards. ChatGPT is the most
| valuable AI product and it's just a wrapper around an
| underlying LLM that is not 10x better than the rest of the
| models.
| curtisszmania wrote:
| That's a fascinating concept, automatic updates for customer-
| facing documents.
|
| * This could revolutionize how we manage information.
|
| * Think of the time saved, no more manual updates.
|
| * Customer satisfaction would likely increase.
|
| * Accuracy in documentation becomes a focus.
|
| Could this be the end of outdated manuals?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Exactly. I think lots of people tend to underestimate how much
| documentation is out there. When I started working on
| Promptless, I assumed it was dominated by things like API docs
| and other developer docs. Turns out that's just a small
| fraction of software docs in general (they call them 'help
| centers' or 'knowledge bases' in this audience). And software
| docs in general is a fraction of docs that are published for
| other industries.
| muratsu wrote:
| This is cool. I've been working on a similar product but with
| Changelog focus (productsync.io). Happy to chat if interested,
| you can reach me from murat at productsync.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Very cool. Will reach out soon!
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> and since no developer enjoys updating docs
|
| They may be rare, but this is not universally true! I have a
| staff developer who creates beautiful documentation, paired with
| hand drawn (tablet) diagrams. I never miss an opportunity to
| complement & thank him for his work, he really seems to enjoy it
| and it goes well with the role's mandate to level-up other
| developers. If you find a developer (especially a senior+) who
| likes to create and maintain documentation, treat them like gold!
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Love this! Those people are definite force multipliers, but the
| fact that they're rare can end up putting a lot of burden on
| their shoulders. And yes, I definitely overgeneralized--while
| it's a running joke that developers hate writing docs,
| definitely not universally true!
| lyime wrote:
| Pricing? Whats bespoke about it? Whats your pricing metric?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| We're still seeing new customers use Promptless in new ways
| (hence pricing can be a bit bespoke sometimes).
|
| But for our standard use-case, the number of docs pages (crude
| proxy for documentation surface area) ends up being the primary
| metric separating pricing tiers. We're in the process of
| standardizing a startup tier that probably fits most docs sites
| that are ~100 pages or fewer and <20 employees.
| kylegalbraith wrote:
| This idea is cool and well-scoped to a specific pain point that
| can be solved today. This is something that I think we need more
| of when it comes to YC batches.
|
| However, you all should publish pricing before launching, and
| forcing me to book a call with you to use it is a nonstarter for
| me.
|
| I don't want to get tied to this tool and then be charged for it
| in some weird way; give me your v0 pricing so that I can pay for
| it in a transparent way. As a fellow founder, I think you also
| know how little time I have for calls to check out demos for
| tools. So, just let me sign up and give it a spin.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Yeah, this is very valid. We opened up a self-service trial
| this week so that people can more easily give it a spin before
| deciding to join a paid plan, but we're still working on a lot
| of the customer experience things to offer a truly complete
| onboarding experience. Appreciate the feedback!
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Forgot to post: link to try Promptless out right now is
| https://gopromptless.ai/hn
| anyekwest wrote:
| this is awesome
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Thank you!
| yonom wrote:
| This is super useful! Have you considered generating docs based
| on customer support in Slack or Discord conversations?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Yes, Promptless already has the ability to be triggered from
| Slack channels (e.g. Slack Connect support channels with
| customers). Discord likely coming later this week or early next
| week!
|
| Happy to get you set up on either!
| ozim wrote:
| I would like to have an AI agent in web app that would have
| source code access and enough knowledge to explain how the app
| should be used.
|
| That could be tied up with product walkthroughs so applications
| would give you a demo on its own and would be always up to date.
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Totally. My cofounder and I are very excited about this idea.
|
| Sort of a primitive version of this, but one Promptless user is
| using it to update in-app tutorials for various integrations
| they have, in addition to public docs. The tutorials in this
| case are just text, but there's a path from having that context
| to actually having an in-app agent that provides a product
| walkthrough tailored for the logged-in user's unique use-case.
| buss_jan wrote:
| Very real problem. We have started to worry about how to maintain
| the many cookbook samples and tutorials, we wrote/are planning on
| writing. Going over every user facing artefact after a code
| change is a non-starter, so you opt for versioning these things
| as they'll necessary become out of date. Very excited to give
| this a spin soon.
| alach11 wrote:
| Even OpenAI's cookbook is out of date in many places. This is a
| really difficult and common problem!
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Yeah, even with lots of full-time resources, companies'
| documentation regularly fall out of date. It's particularly
| ubiquitous in AI just because of how fast the general space
| is changing.
| vednig wrote:
| Congratulations on Launch
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Thank you!
| martypitt wrote:
| Looks great - well done!
|
| Can you clarify the slack integration? I see you've mentioned it,
| but I'm unclear on the workflow.
|
| A use-case I've thought about previously is support discussions
| we have on our slack channel, which indicate that we need to
| update our docs.
|
| Is Promptless able to raise a PR with suggested updates on docs,
| based on question/answers in our support channels?
| prithvi2206 wrote:
| Happy to clarify! There are two main ways people are using the
| Slack integration: (1) You click the Promptless Slack message
| action (video below) on a thread that might warrant a doc
| update--Slack Connect channels are an extremely common use-case
| for this, and (2) You tag @Promptless in a DM or a channel with
| a brief instruction--people sometimes use this for simple
| requests, but after signing up for Promptless, you can also
| send Promptless a link to an old PR, and it'll use the Github
| API to read the content of the PR and draft an update.
|
| Here's a video we made a month or so ago that shows how (1)
| works, hope that helps!
| https://www.tella.tv/video/cm5x8uj9f001d0al11vyxcnsc/view
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