Episode XI of Phase One: Why docs still need an owner, with CT Smith
Eleventh episode of the AI & Docs podcast series is up! In this one, Tom and I talk with CT Smith (Docs Goblin) about her book WTFM: A Practical Guide for Standing Up Docs at a Startup, a short, free-online guide for founders, product managers, and early hires who end up owning docs without knowing technical writing is a profession. We get into why docs need an accountable human owner (and why AI makes that more urgent), how she chunks and compiles docs for agents, the layered pipeline behind her own docs work, what makes a good skill, and the risk of gradually disempowering ourselves as writers.
You can watch / listen to the episode here:
Some of the things I said:
On what a writer brings to a startup
Those three words really summarize what this is all about, like what you bring as a tech writer to a startup.
Those three words are “direction, taste, and scope.”
On not becoming a meat proxy
We don’t want to be meat proxies, that’s the thing. No meat, right?
CT had just made the case that ownership is a governance issue, and joked that people shouldn’t message her at work. That’s when I added:
Power-hungry tech writer is kind of an oxymoron, I think, right?
She agreed. She isn’t after power or importance. She wants information that is controlled, in sync, and up to date.
On accepting that we can’t see everything
I think part of this era we’re going through is accepting that we cannot understand the whole picture.
CT argued that you don’t need to understand the whole product, but you do need to understand how your part fits into the rest, and that there are “levels” of understanding. Which led me to:
My God, yeah, we’re all becoming managers.
“Yeah. Essentially,” she said, and described how she works with AI: like a junior writer she coaches.
On what AI can’t write
Interestingly, these are also the hardest pieces for AI to write. I think these are the pieces where a writer can really shine.
On where to look for the next generation of writers
Go and study the humanities, get some philosophy book.
Some of the things CT said:
On ownership
When you expect everyone to own a system, no one does.
Without an accountable owner, a chatbot can give a customer a wrong answer from a vague doc and nobody investigates. Docs become “nobody’s problem.” CT proposes a new title for the job: “context custodian.”
On working with AI
She treats the AI “like a junior writer that I’m coaching”: Opus drafts, Sonnet reviews, and a human makes the final call. Around 40% of her tickets run nearly autonomously from a doc plan she approves.
On skills
After roughly a thousand evals, CT found that good skills mostly point to the docs and warn about tempting wrong paths. Her monthly report skill turned an eight-hour task into minutes, but skills need ongoing maintenance.
On not becoming a router for AI output
Her counterweight to gradual disempowerment: know the product well enough to spot problems, never pass along unreviewed AI output, and occasionally work tickets by hand. And for writers worried about slop, she suggests becoming an “anti-slopagandist.”