Getting Started

Promptless ❤️ Open-Source

Recommendations and tools for open-source projects using Promptless

Promptless helps open source projects keep documentation in sync with fast-moving codebases. Use it to automatically update developer docs, generate changelogs for new releases, or handle translations.

Open-Source Program

Promptless is free for CNCF, Linux Foundation, and other eligible non-commercial open-source projects. Contact us at help@gopromptless.ai to get started.

Open source workflows sometimes differ from commercial software. We’ve built features and setup guides tailored specifically for open source maintainers.

Quick Start

The basic setup for your open source project involves three steps:

1

Install the GitHub App

Connect GitHub from the Integrations page. You’ll choose which repositories Promptless can access.

Which GitHub app should you install?

  • Standard GitHub app: If you can install apps with write permissions, Promptless creates branches and PRs directly on your repo.
  • GitHub OSS app (read-only): If you can only install read-only apps, Promptless creates PRs from a fork. See the GitHub integration docs for details.
2

Set Up Doc Collections

Doc Collections tell Promptless where your documentation lives.

You can create multiple doc collections if needed—for example, if your changelog is in a different location from your main docs. You can also specify a particular directory if your docs live in a monorepo alongside your code.

See GitHub Repos (Docs as Code) for setup instructions.

3

Create a Project

Create a project from the Projects page to connect your triggers and doc collections.

When creating projects, configure which repos Promptless listens to for PRs and which doc collections to update.

Enable Replay recent PRs to run Promptless on your last 30 days of PRs. This gives you an initial batch of suggestions to calibrate with before going live.

Many open source projects prefer to centralize operations in GitHub so anyone can benefit from Promptless without needing an account. If this applies to you, enable Auto-create PR so suggestions automatically become pull requests. We recommend turning this on after your initial calibration is complete, so that you’re able to refine Promptless’s configuration before rolling it out to all contributors.

Most projects trigger Promptless on opened PRs. For popular open source projects—where many contributor PRs get closed without merging—consider using GitHub Commit triggers instead. This way, Promptless only runs when PRs are actually merged to your default branch. We recommend changing this setting after your initial calibration.

Additional Use Cases

For translation workflows, you might want the trigger to be the English directory of your docs. Promptless will then draft updates that translate content to the rest of your documentation.

If GitHub Issues are part of your workflow, create a GitHub Issues trigger so contributors can tag Promptless in issues to generate doc updates.

For some monorepo use cases, you might want Promptless to add a docs commit to your contributors’ existing PRs rather than create separate docs PRs. If you’re interested in this feature, contact us at help@gopromptless.ai.

Note: this is not compatible with the read-only version of the Promptless Github app.