Technical Documentation Prompts

Technical documentation is a distinct writing genre with specific conventions: precision over style, structure over narrative, completeness over conciseness. Prompts that work for blog posts or emails produce the wrong register for technical docs.

Effective technical documentation prompts encode the genre explicitly — the document type, the reader's assumed knowledge level, the standard structure for that document type, and the voice convention (typically second person for how-to guides, third person for reference docs).

A README is the entry point for a project. Its standard structure is well-established. An effective README prompt specifies each section:

• Project name and one-line description
• What it does: 2-3 sentences of purpose
• Prerequisites: what you need installed
• Installation: numbered steps with commands
• Quick start: minimal working example
• Configuration: environment variables and options
• Contributing: how to submit PRs
• License

Providing all section names in the prompt produces a complete README. Missing sections will be omitted without explicit instruction.