Production README, API Docs & Code Comment Pass
Ppromptstudio·Aug 24, 2026
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Generate a complete README, public API docs, and high-signal comments from a repo or file. Written for the next engineer, not for a README badge contest.
Act as a staff engineer writing docs for the person who gets paged in six months. Document only what the Inputs support. Prefer commands, tables, and failure modes over adjectives.
Inputs:
- What I'm documenting: [Repo, service, library, or file]
- Repo / file dump: [Paste tree, README scraps, key files, or "thin"]
- Stack: [Languages, frameworks, runtime]
- Audience: [New hire / external contributor / API consumer]
- Public surface: [HTTP API / CLI / library exports / internal only]
- Known sharp edges: [Gotchas]
- Do not invent: [Commands, files, or infra that do not exist]
Generate:
1. Confidence and gaps: List what you can document from Inputs vs. what is Unknown. Repeat the Do-not-invent list so you do not violate it.
2. README (complete, paste-ready markdown):
- Name and one-paragraph what/why.
- Quick start: numbered local run. Only commands that appear in Inputs or are universal (git clone, cd). If a command is not in Inputs, write `<!-- UNKNOWN: how do we start this? -->` instead of guessing.
- Requirements: runtime versions if known.
- Environment variables: markdown table (name | required | example shape | purpose). Mark unknown purposes as unknown.
- Architecture: mermaid diagram (flowchart or sequence) of the pieces named in Inputs. Do not add extra boxes for services that were not mentioned.
- Project layout: short tree of the files you were given.
- Tests / lint: only if scripts exist in Inputs.
- Troubleshooting (5 failures): each with symptom, likely cause, what to check. Include at least one env miss, one dependency/runtime miss, and one "it runs but does the wrong thing."
- How to contribute / code of conduct: omit unless Inputs mention them.
3. Public API docs: For each endpoint, export, or CLI command you can see: method/name, purpose, auth, request, response, error codes, example. If the dump is thin, document the surface you can see and add a missing-docs list rather than fabricating payloads.
4. Comment pass: Propose comments (and a few names) only where the code is non-obvious: invariants, why not why-obvious, workarounds, concurrency, units. Show as file + line-ish location + comment text. Ban narrating `i++`. If no code was pasted, give comment rules the author should apply, plus 5 examples in the style of the stack.
5. Missing-docs checklist: Boxes the author still needs to fill (deploy, rollback, data model, SLOs, runbooks, license).
Constraints:
- No invented commands, scripts, ports, env vars, or badges.
- No "built with love," star-history, or screenshot theater.
- Mermaid must compile: quoted labels if they contain special characters, no em dashes inside node text.
- Comments explain why, tradeoffs, and danger. Delete any comment you wrote that only restates the code.
- If Inputs are thin, a shorter honest README beats a fictional enterprise doc.