# Make documentation legible to agents.

> Practical guidance for making product documentation, tool instructions, and workflows easier for AI agents to understand and use.

Published: 2026-08-25  
Updated: 2026-08-25  
Canonical: https://agentexperience.tech/insights/make-documentation-legible/  
Tags: documentation, discovery, tools

Documentation is not only an explanation for a person. It is part of the working context an agent uses to decide what to do next.

An agent needs more than a catalogue of endpoints or features. It needs enough context to choose the right path: what a capability is for, what it needs, what it returns, what can go wrong, and when another route is better.

## Write for the decision

Begin with the job the capability helps complete. Name the situation in which it is useful, the conditions that make it a poor fit, and the outcome a successful use should produce. That is often more useful than mirroring the shape of an internal implementation.

## Keep important context close

Split documentation makes a workflow harder to assemble. Place the constraints, required inputs, related tools, and common failure modes near the action they affect. A person can infer missing connections from experience; an agent may not have the same context.

## Show the route back

A complete guide includes what happens when an input is missing, a request is ambiguous, or a step needs approval. Recovery is not an edge case when an agent is working across real product boundaries.

## Review it as part of the product

When the product changes, revisit the language around it. Old names, stale examples, and overlapping descriptions create the same kind of friction as a broken interface.

The question is simple: does the documentation help an agent make the next decision with less guesswork?