--- title: "ShipDocs is live: AI-generated, chat-ready docs for any codebase" description: ShipDocs scans any GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket (coming soon) repo and ships full per-component docs plus a grounded AI chat - in seconds, not weeks. Here's what's in v1, what's next, and why we built it. date: 2026-04-27 author: Alex Sofroniev tags: [launch, announcement, ai documentation, developer tools] image: /OG.png --- Today we're launching **ShipDocs** - an AI-powered documentation tool that scans any codebase and generates a complete, structured, chat-ready documentation set in seconds. No template wizards. No empty Markdown skeletons. No "go write your README." You connect a repo, and you get docs. If you've ever come back to a side project after six months and tried to remember what `worker-2.ts` actually does, this is for you. If you've ever onboarded a new engineer onto a 200k-line monorepo with a one-paragraph README, this is for you. If you've ever pasted your repo's tree into ChatGPT and asked "what does this even do," this is *especially* for you. ## The README problem Almost every codebase older than 18 months has the same problem: the docs are out of date, partial, or both. The reasons are not mysterious. - Writing docs is slow. Writing *correct* docs is slower. - Nobody on the team has "documentation" in their job title. - The fastest way to get a missing answer is still to ask the engineer who wrote the code, which means the senior people on a team get interrupted constantly. - LLMs make this worse, not better, because pointing Claude or GPT at a raw repo and asking "what does this do?" produces confidently wrong answers if there's no structural signal in the code. Existing docs platforms focus on publishing - they assume you've already done the writing. They don't solve the prior question: *who is going to write the docs in the first place?* That's the gap ShipDocs closes. We generate the docs from your repo automatically, host them, and ground AI chat in them - and the v2 / v3 roadmap covers everything else (versioning, public docs portal, multi-language, team seats, SSO, dependency diagram, Slack/Teams). ShipDocs is built to be the one tool a team needs for codebase docs. ## What ShipDocs does You connect a repo (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket [coming soon]), upload a zip, or push your local working directory from the CLI: ```bash curl -fsSL shipdocs.sh | sh ``` ShipDocs scans every file, detects the real components from the file tree and the manifests it finds, and produces three things: 1. **An Overview document.** Tech stack, architecture, entry points, the key concepts a new developer needs first. This is the doc you hand a new hire - or paste at the top of a coding-agent context window. 2. **One Markdown doc per detected component.** Backend, frontend, workers, CLI, migrations, SDK, webhooks, infra - whatever your repo actually contains. Each doc lists the component's exports, its dependencies, and how it fits into the whole. 3. **An AI chat grounded in those docs.** Every answer cites a file path. If the answer isn't in the docs, the chat says so. No invented function signatures, no hallucinated APIs. You can edit any of the generated docs in a WYSIWYG Markdown editor and the source `.md` stays clean. You can flip a project to public and get a permanent showcase URL anyone can browse - see [shipdocs.sh/showcase](https://shipdocs.sh/showcase) for live examples on real OSS projects. ## What's in v1 Here's what's available the moment you sign up today: - **One-command CLI** that uploads your current working directory in seconds. - **Multi-source import** - GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket (coming soon), zip upload, or CLI. Public and private repos. - **Auto tech-stack detection** - 250+ languages and frameworks, with local run instructions generated automatically. - **AI-generated docs** - Overview plus per-component breakdown. - **Codebase chat** - answers cite exact file paths, refuse to invent APIs. - **WYSIWYG Markdown editor** - edit generated docs in a rich visual editor with live Markdown output. - **Public showcase pages** - opt-in, permanent URLs for any project. Browse other public runs at [/showcase](https://shipdocs.sh/showcase). - **Secure auth** - magic-link email, OAuth (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket [coming soon]), 2FA on every sign-in, multi-device CLI tokens. - **AES-256-GCM at rest** with per-project keys wrapped by a master key in a KMS-backed vault. - **Your code is never used to train AI models.** Not by us, not by the model providers we use. - **Markdown-first surface for AI agents** - every page available as `text/markdown` via content negotiation, plus an `llms.txt` index at the root. ## Pricing | Plan | Price | What you get | |----------|--------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | Free | $0 | 2 repos, full structured docs, AI chat (100 messages/mo) | | Pro | $29/mo | 5 repos, full structured docs, AI chat (500k tokens/mo) | | Advanced | $29/mo | 20 repos, full structured docs, AI chat (unlimited) | The free tier is real: two repos, full structured docs, no time limit, no credit card. It's enough to feel the difference on the projects you actually maintain. ## What's next We're shipping fast. The v2 roadmap is on the public landing page and includes: - **Team members & permissions** for org accounts. - **Public docs portal with templates** so you can publish ShipDocs runs as full documentation sites with your own branding. - **Doc versioning** tied to git refs. - **Scheduled and on-push auto-regeneration** so docs stay current automatically. - **Multi-language docs** via DeepL. Beyond v2, we're working on a visual dependency diagram, Slack and Microsoft Teams integration, and SSO/SAML for enterprise. ## Why we built it Two reasons. The first is selfish: every time we picked up an old codebase or onboarded onto someone else's project, we paid the same tax - hours or days of reading source to build a mental model that should have been a 10-minute read. We wanted that tax gone. The second is structural: AI-assisted development is reshaping how engineers work, and the bottleneck has shifted. The model is not the bottleneck anymore. *Context* is. An AI assistant with a complete, structured map of your codebase outperforms an AI assistant with raw source by a wide margin. ShipDocs builds the map. We want every engineer, on every codebase, to have that map by default. ## Try it Start a free trial on the homepage — no credit card required. - **Get started →** [shipdocs.sh](https://shipdocs.sh/#hero) - **CLI:** `curl -fsSL shipdocs.sh | sh` - **See real output before signing up:** [/showcase](https://shipdocs.sh/showcase) - **Free tools, no signup:** [/tools](https://shipdocs.sh/tools) - README generator, complexity score, explain-in-a-tweet. ## FAQ **Is the free tier really free?** Yes. Two repos, full structured docs, 100 chat messages per month, no credit card, no expiration. **Do you train AI models on my code?** No. Our [robots.txt](https://shipdocs.sh/robots.txt) advertises `ai-train=no` to every known crawler, and ShipDocs itself does not use customer projects to train any model. **What about private repos?** Supported on every paid tier. AES-256-GCM at rest with per-project keys, and your code is never used to train AI models. **Can I edit the generated docs?** Yes - in a WYSIWYG Markdown editor. Your edits become the new source. Regenerating doesn't overwrite manual edits unless you ask it to. **Is this open source?** Not yet. The product is hosted SaaS. We may open-source the indexer once it stabilizes. **How do I start?** Go to the [homepage](https://shipdocs.sh/#hero) and start a free trial. No credit card required. --- **Ready to try it?** [Get started →](https://shipdocs.sh/#hero) - Alex