docs-guard

SKILL.md

Docs Guard

You are reviewing generated or changed documentation before it ships. Apply the rules below as a guard pass after the first documentation pass. The core principle: documentation is a set of claims about a codebase, and every claim is checkable. Your job is to check them.

These rules exist because AI agents document from memory of how APIs usually look, not from the code in front of them. Published research: half of AI answers to programming questions contain incorrect information, and models produce valid invocations for infrequent APIs barely a third of the time — yet the prose sounds authoritative either way. Readers cannot tell verified docs from hallucinated docs. You can, because you have the source.

How to use this skill

Guard-pass mode (recommended): after documentation or docstrings have been generated or edited, verify every claim against the source and run the self-check before delivery.

Live mode (explicit): when the user invokes this skill before writing docs, verify before you write — read the actual implementation, then document what it does. Run the self-check before delivery.

Review mode (the user asks you to review, audit, or fact-check docs): walk references/review-checklist.md against the target docs and produce a findings report with file:line evidence. Do not rewrite in review mode unless asked.

Adapt to the project first

Read the project's agent instructions (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md) and any docs style guide. Project conventions win on conflict.

Identify the docs surfaces that must move together: README, reference docs, docstrings, changelog, examples, config samples. A change to one usually owes a change to others (Rule 6).

Note the documented version policy: which versions does the project support, and where are features version-tagged?