Enrich AI: Enhancing developer experience for documentation

Generate code comments
Enrich Branch Actions
Code Commit Summary for Pull Request

Inspiration

With the reality of working in a technology sector for over 16 years in small and mid size companies made me realize that the hunt to delivery more functionality in less time and cost leads to sacrificing developer ethicists. This include code documentation. This leads to difficult handovers and transitions as developers move from projects or organizations.

The problem statement is not limited to small and medium IT companies, the ever demanding large corporates including BSFI are more enforced on the time and cost factor than documentation.

While new code tools allow you to write test cases and assist in writing faster code and comments. No one want to really write doc comments unless enforced (along with the much needed time).

Tickets / Tasks are assigned excluding the documentation and more on delivering the project.

Enrich.AI is one such idea on the Jira platform using Forge. It allows you to automatically create the much needed documentation using generative AI from google Maker Suite (Vertex AI).

What it does

Enrich.AI allows developer to generate comments from GitHub branches based on the incremental code difference. Secondly it allows to create code summary so that developers can attach them to their pull requests without nothing it on lost paper and memory

How we built it

Enrich AI was built using Forge platform using Jira Issue panel module with Custom UI. With the Atlassian design UI kit. In Addition it used the new Preview (Native NodeJS runtime) that allows custom node libraries to be installed.

With the Native NodeJS runtime the development of this plugin was much faster, Since building GitHub functionalities from purely rest API's was not easy.

Challenges we ran into

Open AI billing was declined, since RBI (central banking authority in India has created new regulations. Thankfully, I had tried maker suite earlier.
While setting up Forge sample program is a breeze. Smaller/little things that available in Forge documentation which one needs to spend time on. A few examples are listed below 2.1. Forge custom functions don't work with UI Kit, Loaders, etc are not available in UI Kit. 2.2. Global functions in Native NodeJS runtime, examples are missing 2.3. Forge tunnel Custom UI kit works only on Chrome and Safari 2.4. While typescript is the go to choice for many, Couldn't locate examples on typescript

Having said this. The platform and the infinite possibilities, I can think of are immense. Documentation is in abundance. The forge security, architecture and platform is fast, meaning it doesn't give you a sense that this application is a custom build application.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Solving the pain point of many developers and their project managers with a no brainer documentation approach will help handovers and future transitions better for tech companies

What we learned

With the various modules, I am already thinking of the infinite possibilities of bringing many other features including real time collaboration on the Forge. This includes Workflows, Triggers, Page level features.