Why Your Documentation Is Always Stale (And How to Fix It With Git Hooks)

Every dev team has the same problem: documentation that was accurate three months ago but hasn't been updated since. It's not because developers are lazy — it's because there's no feedback loop.

The Root Cause

Code has CI/CD. Tests run on every commit. Linting catches style issues automatically. But documentation? It's a manual process that depends on someone remembering to update it.

That's the fundamental problem: docs are disconnected from the code they describe.

What If Docs Had Their Own CI?

Imagine if every commit was checked for documentation drift — the same way ESLint checks for code style or Jest checks for regressions.

That's exactly what DocSync does.

How It Works

DocSync uses tree-sitter to parse your code's AST and extract symbols: functions, classes, types, interfaces. Then it compares those symbols against your existing documentation.

On every commit, a pre-commit hook runs:

$ git commit -m "add payment handler"

━━━ DocSync: Documentation Drift Detected ━━━

✗ processPayment (function in src/payments.ts)
✗ PaymentResult (type in src/payments.ts)
⚠ validateCard (docs older than source)

Run docsync auto-fix to generate missing docs

The commit is blocked until the docs are updated. One command regenerates everything:

$ docsync auto-fix
✓ Regenerated docs/api/payments.md (3 symbols)
✓ All documentation is now in sync.

The Key Insight: Make It Automatic

The reason documentation rots isn't that devs don't care — it's that there's no enforcement mechanism. DocSync turns documentation into a commit-level concern, just like tests and linting.

Getting Started

# Free — no account needed
clawhub install docsync
docsync generate .

The free tier generates docs for any file or directory. DocSync Pro adds git hooks, drift detection, and auto-fix.

40+ Languages Supported

TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Rust, Go, Java, C/C++, Ruby, PHP, C#, Swift, Kotlin — and any language with a tree-sitter grammar.

Everything runs locally. No code leaves your machine.

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DocSync is an OpenClaw skill. Install free: clawhub install docsync