Engineering Documentation Standard¶

Version: 1.0.0

Status: official

Author: Enterprise AI Standards

Description¶

Official engineering standard for documenting software architecture, APIs, decisions, deployment, operations and project knowledge in a consistent, maintainable and AI-readable manner.

Objective¶

Ensure every software project contains complete, accurate and continuously updated documentation throughout its lifecycle.

Philosophy¶

Documentation is part of the software. If the code changes, the documentation changes. Documentation must be useful for humans and AI agents alike.

Principles¶

Documentation as Code.
Living Documentation.
Single Source of Truth.
AI Readable.
Human Friendly.
Version Controlled.
Always Updated.
Architecture First.
Examples Preferred.
Minimal but Complete.

Project Structure¶

Language Features¶

Virtual Threads¶

Structured Concurrency¶

Records¶

Sealed Classes¶

Pattern Matching¶

Collections¶

Streams¶

Optional¶

Exceptions¶

Logging¶

Performance¶

Security¶

Authentication documented.
Authorization documented.
Security assumptions documented.

Testing¶

Test strategy.
Coverage.
Test execution.

Observability¶

Documentation¶

Best Practices¶

README First.
Architecture Diagrams.
ADRs.
OpenAPI.
Mermaid.
Markdown.
Version Controlled.
Living Documentation.
Examples.
AI Readable.

Anti Patterns¶

Outdated documentation.
Missing README.
Missing diagrams.
Broken links.
Missing examples.
Generated documentation not reviewed.
Documentation outside Git.
Hardcoded secrets.
Unexplained architecture.
Empty documentation.

Review Checklist¶

[ ] README.
[ ] ADR.
[ ] Architecture.
[ ] OpenAPI.
[ ] Deployment.
[ ] Docker.
[ ] Operations.
[ ] Security.
[ ] Environment Variables.
[ ] Examples.

Examples¶

References¶

https://c4model.com/
https://adr.github.io/
https://mermaid.js.org/
https://plantuml.com/
https://swagger.io/
https://spec.openapis.org/
https://www.markdownguide.org/