Explore code to write technical documentation
Real-world thread: fern's only technical writer, Devin Logan, uses the Devin AI engineer, which already has context on all of Fern's repos, to explore code before writing. She also tags Fern Writer, a Slack agent assembled on Devin, with an engineering thread, and it opens a PR with drafted pages, reorganized content and redirects. She reports about 20,000 new lines of docs per month across roughly 500 pages.
- Agent or tool
- Devin
- Topic
- Productivity
- Reported on
- Blog
- Added
- 2026-10-15
Why it matters
Small, repetitive tasks eat more of the week than anyone likes to admit. Cases like this show an agent taking a chore off someone's plate end to end, not just suggesting what to do. It is one of 196 sightings filed under Productivity on Agent Sightings (number 193 by interest), and one of 20 involving Devin.
How you could try it
Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into Devin or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.
Help me explore code to write technical documentation. Break it into steps, show your work, and wait for confirmation before anything irreversible, paid, or outbound.
Tip: Start small: run it once on a low-stakes example, read what the agent did, and only then let it run on real work.
Source
Read the original first-hand account on Blog: https://buildwithfern.com/post/ai-assisted-technical-writer. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.
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