Technical writers are not immune to the “AI revolution.” In fact, technical writing seems to many an obvious place for AI intervention, as tools like Claude and ChatGPT are often used to generate content and summarize information.
But those of us who work on documentation know that the role is more than just “product in, instructions out.” We provide important institutional knowledge, we’re often the first to use and QA new product features, and we have a deep understanding of what our users need to be successful. Generative AI tools can only operate on what they already know, whereas our real, human experiences are what allow us to create genuinely effective and helpful content.
That said, AI can be a useful tool for creating and improving your documentation. The key is figuring out how to use it just enough to be helpful, but not so much that it impedes your process or takes away the parts of technical writing that require a human touch.
This post is the first in a three-part series about how technical writers can use AI as a tool to supplement their process and help them be successful. First up: using AI to improve documentation search and discoverability.
Fact: AI Is Good At Summarizing Information
Search and synthesis play to AI's strengths: pattern matching, structuring information, and keeping context over a large amount of text. AI can move at lightning speed and doesn't get tired.
This makes it great for helping users find information in your docs, whether they’re interacting with the content directly on the page or by asking questions in Claude or ChatGPT. Fortunately, there are several AI tools technical writers can use to make this a smooth process in either situation.
Search Tools for Humans
For your human readers landing on your docs pages, consider adding an AI search tool. Your docs already have some sort of search, even if it’s just Ctrl-F on the keyboard. An AI search can save your users a lot of time and is more robust than a basic keyword search.
In ReadMe, the AI search feature is called Ask AI. It’s an AI search tool that’s specifically trained on your content and appears on every page in your documentation. ReadMe lets you configure Ask AI on a variety of vectors: voice and tone, how long and detailed its answers are, which AI model is used to generate the responses, topics you want the search to avoid, and the example questions users see when they first open search. As an added bonus, ReadMe also provides analytics for Ask AI. You can see the questions that were asked, how the search tool responded, and how the user rated the response.
Discoverability Tools for AI (and Humans Who Use AI)
AI Discoverability is exactly what it sounds like: making it easy for Claude, ChatGPT, and other AI products to read your documentation. Enabling discoverability features ensures that AI is pulling information directly from your content instead of falling back to whatever it can find on the web. These changes are often invisible to human readers but make a big difference for agents.
ReadMe has built-in tools for making your documentation agent-friendly out of the box. We test your documentation against the Agent-Friendly Documentation Spec – a list of criteria that determines how easy it is for AI to read your content – and provide switches to flip that can improve your score. These include custom LLMs.txt files, link headers, agent skills, and other access tools you can enable, all configurable in one place.
For users working with AI coding tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot, an MCP server allows the coding tool to connect directly to your documentation. With an MCP server connection to your docs, the tool is generating code using real API endpoints and parameters instead of guessing or making things up. The ReadMe MCP server provides several configuration options to match the complexity of your API and docs, including authentication, custom tools, and controlling which endpoints are exposed.
Let AI Work for You, Not the Other Way Around
Ultimately, your skills as a technical writer cannot be matched by any automated system. But learning how to use AI in your workflow can help make your docs even more effective for your users, and ReadMe is here with a wide range of tools to help you stay in sync with your users, however they’re using your product.
Stay tuned for Part 2: AI for Documentation Review and Part 3: AI for Generating and Updating Content, and as always reach out to us if you have any questions or want to learn more about getting started with ReadMe.
