What to look for in a documentation AI assistant

A documentation AI assistant answers your customers’ questions from your own docs, in a chat, in whatever words they use. Look for one that answers only from what your docs say, links the page it used, admits when the docs don’t cover a question and passes that question to you. It should also keep a list of the questions your docs didn’t cover. That list is worth as much as the answers, because it’s your missing docs, written by your customers.

Deacon is an AI customer support agent that works as a documentation AI assistant for founders who answer support themselves. It answers in seconds from your docs, on your docs site, in your app and anywhere else you add it. It also shows you what your customers are stuck on and what they want next. There’s a free plan, and it needs no card.

The same search also finds AI that helps you write documentation, such as the generators built into code editors. This page is about the kind your customers talk to.

Three ways to add an AI assistant to your docs

Which one fits depends on where your docs live and where your customers get stuck.

Use the one your docs platform has

If your docs are on a hosted platform, look at its plans first. Mintlify’s assistant comes with its Pro plan and above, and GitBook’s full chat comes with its Ultimate site plan, as each platform’s own docs said on 23 September 2026. It’s the least setup, because the platform already has your pages. Both can go in your app too, GitBook’s through an embed code on Ultimate and Mintlify’s through its API, with a widget you build from its tutorial. The best knowledge base software ranks GitBook among eight tools and says which plans answer customers with AI.

Add a hosted assistant with a script tag

A hosted assistant reads your docs from their web address or from files you upload, and goes on any site that takes a script tag. That matters because many questions start away from the docs. A buyer asks on your pricing page, and a customer gets stuck halfway through a task in your app. One assistant in all three places gives the same answers everywhere and keeps every question in one list.

Build your own

You can build one from parts, with something to split your docs into passages, a search index, a language model and a set of test questions. Getting it to answer takes days. Getting it to say “I don’t know” every time it should takes far longer, and that’s the part your customers will judge it on.

Six tests to run before your readers see it

Whichever you pick, try it on your own docs before any customer does. These six tests take ten minutes and catch most of what goes wrong.

1. Ask something your docs don’t cover. A good assistant says it doesn’t know. A bad one invents an answer that sounds just like a real one.
2. Ask for a number you’ve never written down, such as the price of a plan you don’t sell. It should decline rather than guess.
3. Ask in your customers’ words, not your docs’ words. If your docs say “rotate credentials”, ask how to stop an old key working. It should still find the page.
4. Paste an exact error message or code. Search by meaning blurs exact strings, so a good assistant searches by keyword too and finds the one page that names it.
5. Ask in another language. It should reply in that language, from your English docs.
6. Ask for a person. It should take a way to reach the customer and tell you, not send them round in circles.

Then click the link under an answer. It should open the page the answer came from.

Put it where the questions start

The docs site is where people go once they’ve decided to look something up. Plenty of questions come before that, so add the assistant in three places.

• Your docs, for the reader lost in the sidebar.
• Your app, for the customer stuck halfway through a task, who won’t go and search the docs. If your app tells the assistant who’s asking, such as their plan, it can pick the answer that applies to them.
• Your pricing page, for the buyer with one question before they pay.

Docs often live at a different address from the app, such as docs.example.com and app.example.com. Check that your assistant runs on both and keeps their questions in one list.

What your readers’ questions say about your docs

Documentation is self-service support, and the questions it didn’t answer show you where it fell short. Each one points at one of three fixes. A heading uses different words from your customers, a page doesn’t exist yet, or the product doesn’t do what they want. Here’s how a month might look for an invented API product.

Read the list once a week and start with the question most people asked. The page each question was asked from tells you where the docs let them down. And a page no answer has come from in months is either out of date or about something nobody asks. How to write knowledge base articles shows how to rewrite a page so readers and an AI agent both find it.

How Deacon works as a documentation AI assistant

Deacon answers your readers and shows you what your docs are missing, from one script tag, with nobody watching the chat.

It answers from your docs in seconds, at any hour and in the language the reader writes in. Your docs become an AI knowledge base, searched by meaning and by keyword, so a question in your customers’ words finds the right page and so does a pasted error code. When your docs don’t cover the question, Deacon says it doesn’t know instead of guessing and asks for the reader’s email. If they leave it or ask for a person, the owners on your team get an email. Reply from the dashboard, and if the reader still has the chat open, your reply appears there.

A developer in Osaka can ask in Japanese and read the answer in Japanese, taken from your English docs, with the English page linked under it.

An answer taken from a page on your site usually carries a link to that page, like the one above. Answers drawn from uploaded files, pasted text or answers you wrote carry none, because those have no address. So add your docs as a website. When you sign up, Deacon learns by itself from your home page and main pages. Your docs’ front page can be one of them. You can untick any you’d rather it left out. On a paid plan you can crawl your whole docs site and tick the pages it learns from. How Deacon reads your docs goes through it step by step.

One script covers your docs, your app and your marketing site. Your domain under Your sites on the Install page covers its subdomains too, so example.com covers docs.example.com and app.example.com with nothing more to add. Docs on another domain, such as a hosted help centre, need their own entry. Every question lands in the same Conversations list.

It shows you which pages work. On Analytics › Widget, the Messages card names the sources that answered the most questions, and the ones nothing was answered from in the range you picked. Topics group readers’ questions, count the people who asked and label most of them as a how-to, a bug report, a feature ask and so on. When readers on one page get stuck clearly more often than anywhere else on your site, Analytics › Widget names that page. It also compares how often questions not in English went unanswered with questions in English. Both wait until there are 20 questions on each side, so one bad afternoon doesn’t set them off.

It gets better every time you answer. Each question your docs didn’t cover has an Answer this button. Write the answer once and it becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it can answer the next reader who asks. Save & check shows you the reply Deacon now gives, and how many other open questions your answer covers. The more you answer, the less it needs you.

Every feature is on every plan, including the free one, which needs no card and has no end date. There’s no badge to pay to remove, and nothing is billed past a plan’s answers.

Questions about documentation AI assistants

Will it make things up?

It can, if it’s allowed to fill the gaps from what the model already knows. Deacon answers only from the passages it finds in your docs for each question, and won’t give a price, a number, a date or a policy detail your docs never state. Why support bots make things up explains the rules behind that.

Does every answer link to a page of my docs?

No. An answer from a page on your site usually links to it, but not always. An answer from a file, pasted text or an answer you wrote shows no link, because none of those has an address.

Does it use the page the reader is on?

Deacon records the page and shows it to you beside the conversation, but doesn’t use it to answer. When a question is too vague to answer, such as “how do I change this?”, it asks one question back.

Should it replace the search box on my docs?

No, keep both. Search suits the reader who knows what the thing is called, and the assistant suits the one who doesn’t. You can add a button of your own beside the search box that opens Deacon with Deacon.open(), and hide Deacon’s launcher if you’d rather have one way in.

Can it answer questions about a customer’s own account?

No. Deacon can’t see anyone’s account, so it declines any question about a visitor’s own account, invoice or data and offers to take their email, and you reply. Human handoff shows how that reaches you.

How much of my docs will the free plan hold?

About 67 pages. The free plan holds 1 MB of text, and a page of docs is about 15,000 bytes of it. It also gives you 50 answers a month and needs no card. The paid plans hold more, and the pricing page has the figures.