---
description: Minimum documentation updates required for code, product, and operations changes
alwaysApply: true
---

# Documentation Standards

Documentation is part of delivery when behavior, operation, or integration changes. Keep it close to the thing it explains.

## Update Documentation When
- User-facing behavior, setup, configuration, API contracts, permissions, deployment, or operations change.
- A new workflow, feature flag, environment variable, dependency, migration, or integration is introduced.
- A bug fix changes expected behavior or removes a known limitation.

## Minimum Artifacts
- README or getting-started docs for setup, local development, and common commands.
- API docs or contract examples for request, response, error, and auth changes.
- Runbooks for operational tasks, incidents, migrations, rollback, and manual support procedures.
- ADRs for important architecture choices.
- Release notes for user-visible changes, breaking changes, migrations, and known risks.

## Quality Bar
- Documentation must be accurate, concise, and executable by someone who did not write the change.
- Include commands, environment variables, expected outputs, and troubleshooting notes when relevant.
- Do not duplicate source-of-truth configuration or type definitions in prose unless there is a sync check.
- Remove obsolete docs in the same change that makes them obsolete.