Every time we hired a new developer, the same nightmare started.
Week 1: "Alex, how does this service work?"
Week 2: "Alex, where does this connect to?"
Week 3: still pulling me and my senior devs away from real work.
I managed a team building software across multiple projects — Java backends, ESP32 firmware in C/C++, frontend apps. The codebase was real, complex, and completely undocumented in any readable form.
New hires weren't the problem. The codebase was.
The Tools I Tried (And Why They All Failed)
I spent a long time looking for a fix before I decided to build one.
Confluence — Someone has to write it first. We never did. Nobody does.
Notion wikis — Outdated before you finish typing. Great intentions, zero maintenance.
NotebookLM — Genuinely great product. Doesn't support code files. Dead end.
ChatGPT/Claude — Paste your entire codebase manually or through CLI always updated manually. Sure.
Swimm and Mintlify — The closest things to what I needed. Both require manual input, both are expensive for private repos, and neither lets your non-technical teammates actually use them.
Nothing solved the full problem: scan my private codebase automatically, generate structured docs, and let my entire team — devs and non-devs — chat with them.
What I Actually Needed
Let me be specific about the problem, because I think a lot of dev leads feel this but can't articulate it clearly.
The real cost of undocumented codebases isn't the onboarding time. It's the interruption tax on your senior developers.
Every time a new hire asks a question:
- A senior dev context-switches out of deep work
- Answers a question they've answered 6 times before
- Loses 20-90 minutes of productive flow Multiply that by every new hire, every week, across every project. It's not a small problem. It's thousands of hours of your best engineers' time wasted every year.
And it's not just new devs. Marketing needs to understand what's being built. Sales needs to explain it to clients. Product managers need to know what's possible. Your entire non-technical team is flying blind.
So I Built ShipDocs
The concept is simple:
- Point it at your private repos (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, zip upload or CLI)
- AI scans every file and generates structured documentation automatically
- Your whole team browses the docs or chats with them directly No manual writing. No outdated wikis. No copy-pasting code into any AI tool.
The docs are structured into real components — Overview, Architecture, Backend, Frontend, Workers, CLI, Migrations — whatever your actual codebase looks like. Not one-size-fits-all pages.
And the chat cites file paths. Every answer tells you exactly where in the codebase the information comes from. No hallucinated APIs. No vague summaries.
For Those Who Live in the Terminal
$ curl -fsSL shipdocs.sh | sh
That's it. One command installs the CLI. Auth via browser, then:
$ shipdocs
→ scanning 1,284 files…
→ detecting components…
✓ found: backend · frontend · workers · cli · migrations
→ writing docs [6/9]
✓ done in 2m 14s
$ open shipdocs.sh/p/your-repo
Your entire codebase documented without leaving your terminal.
What It Detects
ShipDocs auto-detects your stack — languages, frameworks, package managers — and writes the run instructions automatically.
It handles:
- TypeScript, JavaScript, React, Vue, Svelte
- Python, Django, FastAPI, Flask
- Java, Spring Boot, Maven, Gradle
- C, C++, ESP32 firmware, Arduino, PlatformIO
- Go, Rust, PHP, Swift
- Bun, Elysia, Hono, Express
- Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform
- Monorepos, microservices, micro-CLIs
- and many more... If you write it, ShipDocs reads it.
The Security Question (I Know You're Thinking It)
Private code is private. I built this for teams with real IP in their repos. Here's what we do:
- AES-256-GCM encryption at rest — per-project keys, KMS-backed vault
- Never used for AI training — your code is never used to train any model, ours or anyone else's. We pay the model providers directly and use TEE models so you stay out of training data.
- GDPR-aligned — right to erasure, defined retention windows, 90-day grace before hard delete
- Nothing usable hits the database in plaintext
Three Free Tools (No Account Needed)
While you're deciding whether ShipDocs is right for you, I built three free tools that work on public repos right now:
AI README Generator — Paste a repo URL, get a professional README in seconds. No more blank page.
Repo Complexity Score — Scan any public repo and get a complexity report. Weirdly addictive to run on repos you know.
Explain Repo in a Tweet — Paste a repo URL, get a one-sentence explanation. Great for understanding unfamiliar codebases fast.
All three are free, no account needed. Try them on a repo you know well and see how accurate the output is.
The Stack (Since You'll Ask)
- Frontend: TanStack Start (React, file-based routing)
- Backend: ElysiaJS + Bun (fast, excellent WebSocket support for streaming)
- Database: PostgreSQL on Neon
- Auth: Better-Auth (magic link, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket OAuth)
- AI: OpenRouter — different models per plan tier
- Payments: Polar
- Hosting: Cloudflare Pages
- Domain: shipdocs.sh (yes, the domain is the install command)
Pricing and Early Access
ShipDocs is in early access right now. 151 devs have already joined and the feedback is amazing! First 500 members get founding pricing locked in forever:
| Plan | Founding Price | Normal Price | Repos | Messages/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 2 | 100 |
| Starter | $7.20/mo | $9/mo | 8 | 2,000 |
| Pro | $23.20/mo | $29/mo | 50 | 3,000 |
Free plan is genuinely free — no credit card, no trial period, just two repos and 100 messages a month forever.
Early access → shipdocs.sh
One Last Thing
If you've ever been the senior dev who got pulled out of deep work to explain the same module for the sixth time — this is for you.
If you've ever been the new hire who felt like they were drowning in an undocumented codebase for the first three weeks — this is for you.
If you've ever been the founder who couldn't explain to their marketing team what the engineers are actually building — this is for you.
Stop writing docs. Start shipping them.
Built by @DevOffScript — follow along as I build in public.
Questions, feedback, or brutal honesty → drop a comment below or find me on X.
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