docs goblin

I've written about benchmarking Voyage and Cohere embeddings and about using Jev in my authoring agent, but I never wrote down how the search and chat in Shoalrun actually fit together, or why I built them this way.

I'm building a doc compiler called Shoalrun.

I did some light embedding model benchmarking on my new project's docs.

Hi, long time no talk.

Hi, long time no talk.

Hi, I know it's been a while since my last post.

We've all seen AI slop online.

I recently hired a human technical writer to work on my team.

I recently got my first pair of progressive lenses.

I've used RescueTime at nearly every job I've had since I started tech writing.

Hi!

(I didn't actually throw my Samsung Galaxy S21 into the sea, it's in a drawer) Anyone who has ever spoken to me for more than four minutes knows that I'm not really a "tech" person.

I've been scripting the boring and repetitive parts of my job since 2014.

It's been a busy few weeks for me professionally and personally, and I'm finally getting a little time to sit down and write another post.

I recently had a post published on the Payabli blog.

Recently, I built an AI-powered testing tool that simulates different user personas navigating documentation with a defined goal to measure success rates, identify navigation issues, and help find actionable insights for doc teams.

I'm obsessed with API definitions.

Originally posted sometime in 2015 At my 90-day review at my first technical writing position, I got some feedback that ticked me off: 'unleash your writing freedom' or some other corny-sounding thing.

Throwback post from 2015 I wrote and published this waaaaay back in September 2015, and I recently dug it out of my old GitHub account to share it again here.

I got a burst of creativity or maybe it was that Dr Enuf I didn't have any plans this weekend, so I decided to figure out how much cool stuff I can build between Friday night and Sunday night and still have time for my typical weekend activities. something

posts September 7, 2026: another way for agents to read docs June 27, 2026: slopaganda countermeasures, part 2 March 17, 2026: slopaganda countermeasures, part 1 March 13, 2026: some tech writing job hunting tips, from a hiring manager February 6, 2026: a…

Relative links continue to humble me Picking up from part 2 of this tale, this post is going to cover how I created the script that creates the markdown snippets that I can reference in my pages.

I wish all relationships had schemas Yesterday, I posted a grand plan to add what amounts to a modern see also element built with a relationship mapping file (see part 1).

How to use frontmatter and scripting to map relationships One of my favorite features of DITA is the reltable (relationship table), which lets you explicitly map relationships between pieces of content.

DOCS LIKE STRIPE.

Picking up from yesterday's csv export experiment, I have big csv file with a bunch of gaps I don't want to manually fill if I don't have to.

Sometimes, as doc owners, it's good for us to try to make Marketing happy.

I was a fairly early adopter of genAI at work — as soon as security and leadership allowed, I started using various AI chat interfaces to make my job faster.