Autodocs

Inspiration

As a developer myself, I noticed the time I was forced to spend writing documentation after implementing any features. Although AI could assist, it was never thorough enough and didn't write quality documentation while still requiring me to manually generate it. Knowing there must be a better way, I build AutoDocs, a command-line solution to documentation struggles.

What it does

Autodocs is a command line tool for quickly generating README.md and documentation files for projects. While developers would normally have to write these manually or inaccurately using AI, Autodocs provides Gemini 2.0 with full code context and generates full, accurate documentation.

How we built it

I built AutoDocs using a Python backend with FastAPI for API endpoints. To implement the AI integration for documentation generation, I applied Google's Gemini API. Throughout the project, git was used as source control management as well as within the projects workflow so that the AI could locally clone the repository to write its docs.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, we had faced issues using git within our Python workflow to clone the project being documented, although this was quickly fixed by implementing error handling sequences. Furthermore, we found it hard to fit larger codebases into Gemini's limited context window, so we had to rely on different techniques such as chunking and summarization.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One major accomplishment within our project was creating a system capable of being used in a corporate setting. Furthermore, our robust error handling and logging is a major accomplishment, as it allows our power users to understand everything going on behind the scenes.

What we learned

Throughout creating this project, I learned how to effectively utilize LLM context window, as we had to fit massive projects into a Gemini context window. I also gained better developer practice in handling repositories and git source control management.

What's next for AutoDocs

AutoDocs' next steps include integration with CI/CD platforms, allowing for it to act as a plugin to automatically generate docs without even requiring a developer's command line. Additionally, I could add more features for enterprise programming, such as AI code reviews and performance optimization.