What They Said
Finding #1: The "2-Week Productive Gap"
Around 17 said it takes 1-2 weeks minimum for new devs to become productive.
senior devs spend 10-15 hours per hire just answering the same questions over and over again like:
- "Where's the login flow?"
- "Why did we choose Redis over PostgreSQL for sessions?"
- "How do I set this project up locally?"
Finding #2: The Real Problem Isn't Missing Documentation
13 out of 20 said they had documentation.
But new developers still asked questions instead of reading it.
Why?
"Because half of it is outdated, and we don't know which half."
The docs existed. They just couldn't be relied upon especially in fast-paced projects where things change daily.
I asked developers what tools they currently use
Notion/Confluence (Common standard):
- Great for writing docs
- manual updation of docs to stay up to date
- Nobody trusts them after 6 months
GitHub README:
- Looks similar to code (good)
- Manual maintenance (bad)
- Goes stale
Claude Code / ChatGPT (The trendy one):
- Can explain specific code files
- Doesn't have PR history or context
- Automatically creates documentation after providing necessary code files as context, but require manual trigger or prompt to keep them up to date
Based on the discussions, here's what I believe would actually help
Documentation That Auto-Updates
New code merged -> docs automatically regenerate -> always accurate.
No manual maintenance. No stale docs.
Searchable Knowledge on Architecture / Design
Not just "what the code does" but "why we built it this way".
Indexed from:
- Code + comments
- PR descriptions & discussions
- Architecture decision records
RAG-Powered Onboarding Assistant
Imagine a new dev could ask:
"How does authentication work in this codebase?"
And get back sure shot answers with context on the codebase.
Instead of:
- Searching GitHub for 15 minutes
- Reading 6 outdated docs
- Finally asking a senior dev
How long does onboarding take at your company? Is it days, weeks or months?
What's the biggest bottleneck? Is it Finding information?
Understanding why decisions were made?
Knowing who to ask?
I am really interested to know your Honest Feedback or Experience :)
Before I build this, I want to validate I'm not solving a problem only we had.
Does a clear solution / product already exist in the market.
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