Documentation workflow

Documentation at GitLab follows a workflow.

Before merging

Ensure your documentation includes:

• Product badges.
• The GitLab version that introduced the feature.
• Accurate links.
• Accurate user permissions.

Ensure you've followed the style guide and word list.

Documentation labels

When you author an issue or merge request, choose the Documentation template. It includes these labels, which are added to the merge request:

• A type label, either ~"type::feature" or ~"type::maintenance".
• A stage label and group label. For example, ~devops::create and ~group::source code.
• A ~documentation specialization label.

A member of the Technical Writing team adds these labels:

• A documentation scoped label with the docs:: prefix. For example, ~docs::improvement.
• The ~Technical Writing team label.

Post-merge reviews

If not assigned to a Technical Writer for review prior to merging, a review must be scheduled immediately after merge by the developer or maintainer. For this, create an issue using the Doc Review description template and link to it from the merged merge request that introduced the documentation change.

Circumstances in which a regular pre-merge Technical Writer review might be skipped include:

• There is a short amount of time left before the milestone release. If fewer than three days are remaining, seek a post-merge review and ping the writer via Slack to ensure the review is completed as soon as possible.
• The size of the change is small and you have a high degree of confidence that early users of the feature (for example, GitLab.com users) can easily use the documentation as written.

Remember:

• At GitLab, we treat documentation like code. As with code, documentation must be reviewed to ensure quality.
• Documentation forms part of the GitLab definition of done.
• That pre-merge Technical Writer reviews should be most common when the code is complete well in advance of a milestone release and for larger documentation changes.
• You can request a post-merge Technical Writer review of documentation if it's important to get the code with which it ships merged as soon as possible. In this case, the author of the original MR can address the feedback provided by the Technical Writer in a follow-up MR.
• The Technical Writer can also help decide that documentation can be merged without Technical writer review, with the review to occur soon after merge.

Do not use ChatGPT or AI-generated content for the docs

GitLab documentation is distributed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, which presupposes that GitLab owns the documentation.

Under current law in the US and the EU, it’s possible that AI-generated works might either:

• not be owned by anyone because they weren't created by a human, or
• belong to the AI training data's creator, if the AI verbatim reproduces content that it trained on

If the documentation contains AI-generated content, GitLab probably wouldn't own this content, which would risk invalidating the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Contributions to GitLab documentation are made under either our DCO or our CLA terms. In both, contributors have to make certain certifications about the authorship of their work that they can't validly make for AI-generated text.

For these reasons, do not add AI-generated content to the documentation.

Related topics

• Reviews and levels of edit
• Technical writing assignments
• The Style Guide
• The Word list
• The Markdown Guide