Recipe Documentation Practice
Build the habit of writing clear, maintainable documentation by treating every feature like a recipe — ingredients, steps, and expected results.
Why Recipes?
A recipe forces you to list prerequisites, enumerate steps in order, and define what success looks like. The same discipline turns scattered notes into documentation that teammates can actually follow.
The Template
## Title
### Ingredients
- Prerequisite A (version, access, tool)
- Prerequisite B
### Steps
1. Do this first
2. Then this
3. Verify with ...
### Expected Result
What you should see when it works.
Practice Loop
- 1Pick a feature you built this week and write its recipe from memory.
- 2Hand the recipe to a teammate who has never touched that feature.
- 3Watch silently. Every place they pause is a gap in your recipe.
- 4Revise and repeat until zero pauses.
Anti-Patterns
Skipping prerequisites
"Just install the deps" — which deps? What versions?
Vague verification
"It should work" — define the exact output or behavior.
Assumed context
"Run the script" — from which directory? With which flags?
Stale recipes
Docs that haven't been tested in months rot silently.