Stateful docs site assistants

2024 Feb 8

I think about the people reading my docs in terms of “journeys”. Google Search drops them into some random page of my site. The content they really need often isn’t on that exact page; they need to click around to a few other pages. Or they’re building something complex and the ideas are spread across multiple pages. For a GenAI chatbot assistant thingamajigger to be truly helpful, it’s got to be a companion on that journey. “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” It needs to remember your goal, the pages you’ve visited, and the things you previously said. Most important, I think this could seriously speed up the time it takes our users to Get Shit Done. Bonus, if we can get logs of those chat conversations, we (the docs site maintainers) will have a much better idea about what kinds of journeys our users are actually going on. The video below is a proof-of-concept that stateful docs site assistants are possible.