Edit The Docs

Edit the docs

Improves existing Supabase docs pages: structure, order, connective text, and clarity.

Not this skill: write-the-docs drafts net-new content or product-grounded rewrites from intent and code. review-the-docs covers build and PR triage.

Output is one pull request, with one change type per commit. A reviewer reads the style diff apart from the structure diff without holding several PRs in their head. Split into a stack of PRs only when the requester asks for one, or approves the split you offer because the diff turned out large. Phase 0 covers when to raise it, and reference/stacked-prs.md covers the mechanics.

Core rules

1. Read before you rewrite. Open the target page and nearby pages of the same type. Name the reader's goal and the page type before moving sections.
2. Don't invent product truth. Verify it, in its own PR. Style and structure work preserves behavior claims, UI labels, and positioning as written. Correcting a claim is PR 3 work, and adding one belongs to the additions branches above it. Those PRs follow write-the-docs grounding rules: read the code, separate shipped behavior from product intent, and flag what you inferred.
3. Follow the style guide for voice, terminology, structure, and components.
4. Prefer brevity. Use broad strokes when mechanical detail doesn't help the reader's task. Cut redundancy. Don't over-explain.
5. Reuse sibling skills. Get IA and architecture from ask-the-docs. Get validation and self-review from review-the-docs. Apply the style guide's timeless documentation rather than duplicating it here.
6. One change type per diff. A diff that mixes reworded prose with moved sections is unreviewable, because the reader can't tell a move from a rewrite. Separate them by commit in a single PR, or by branch in a stack.

Phase 0: Size and split

1. Identify the document type per 03-page-structure.md. The types are explainer, tutorial, guide, reference, and troubleshooting.

2. State the reader's goal and prerequisites in one or two lines.

3. Note structural problems: mixed information types interrupting a procedure, missing intro navigation on a long page, weak transitions, redundancy, or over-explained mechanics.

4. Sort the diagnosis into the buckets below. Drop any bucket that comes back empty, and say so. Style, structure, and technical revision take one commit or branch each. Additions take as many as the content needs, so the edit has no fixed size. A style edit plus a structural edit is the common shape, because most pages that need restructuring are already correct. Two buckets is a complete result, not a truncated one.

5. Know where the edit ends. The edit is only the buckets that have content. Any bucket you drop is beyond the edit, and a later request for that change type is a new request. That includes one you raise yourself. Name it, keep the work in progress clean, and ask whether it belongs in this edit, in a separate ticket, or nowhere. Absorbing it into a bucket that's already open is what turns an edit into a rewrite.

6. Size the edit. When it comes out large, offer a stack. Don't choose one. One PR with each bucket as its own commit is the output unless the requester approves a split. Raise the question when both hold:

   • The edit rewrites prose and moves sections, or it corrects a technical claim.
   • It runs over roughly 150 changed lines.

   Say how large the diff is and propose the branches. Name the trade in the ask: a stack gives a reviewer clean per-change-type diffs, and it also means no PR page shows the whole edit, so reading it end to end costs them an extra command. Their reviewers pay that cost, so it's their call. No answer means one PR.

7. Summarize the diagnosis and the proposed split to the requester, and wait for confirmation before creating any branch. Name which buckets are empty and why. When nobody is available to confirm, record the diagnosis in the PR body and ship one PR.

When the diff outgrows the estimate mid-edit, stop and offer the split then. A size call made at diagnosis can be wrong by the time the style pass lands. Say how large it got and ask. Splitting unasked is the failure here, and so is carrying on quietly because you already have an answer.

The sections below are named for the stacked case. In a single PR they're commits, in the same order and under the same rules.

PR 1: Style

Inline changes only. Nothing in this PR moves a line from one place to another.

Rewrite:

• Use second person, present tense, short paragraphs, and ordered steps for sequential actions.
• Put procedures in procedure format. Per-step formatting is in 02-elements.md; how many steps to present at once and when to split into phases is in 03-page-structure.md.
• Apply 02-elements.md for admonitions, emphasis, links, and lists, and 01-voice-and-tone.md for person, tense, and sentence-level grammar.
• Keep code samples executable in their stated context, and mark intentionally omitted code. Prefer partials under apps/docs/content/_partials/ over copied blocks.
• Check the alt text on every image, and open the image to do it. Alt text on an existing page usually names the topic rather than describing the picture, and a topic name is what the nearby heading already says. Describe what a reader who can't see it would need: the labeled parts, the relationships between them, and any values the diagram carries. This is a rewrite of existing text, so it belongs in this PR.

Cut:

• Restated points and mechanical over-explanation.
• Time-anchored language and unshipped features: timeless documentation. Internal planning context in shipped MDX: keep internal context out. Repeated points: brevity. Single-item lists and restated admonitions: 02-elements.md.
• Terminology that doesn't match WORD_LIST.md. Run both passes from Use with an AI agent: Phrase groups gives you every literal term list in one read, then grep '^### ' WORD_LIST.md and open only the entries matching words on the page. Cover terms already on the page, not only the ones you introduce. An existing page is where nonconforming terminology accumulates.

PR 2: Structure

Apply 03-page-structure.md — section grouping, navigation, and glue. This section is the procedure for doing that on an existing page; the rules live in the guide.

Work in this order, and settle the outline before you move a line. A restructure invalidates every branch above it in the stack, so each revision costs a full restack, and a restack is where content gets dropped in conflict resolution. Reworking the shape twice costs far more than getting it right once.

1. Lock the headings other code links to

Grep the whole repo for #<slug> against every heading on the page, not just apps/docs/content. Studio renders Docs buttons that deep-link into guide anchors, and apps/www links into them too. Those are the matches that break a button in the product rather than a link between two pages.

Write the matched heading texts down. For the rest of this PR they are immutable. Moving a section preserves its slug, and so does changing its level. Only renaming breaks it. That is what makes an aggressive regroup safe.

2. Classify every substantial section

Classify each one against the information types in 03-page-structure.md, then collapse them into the three buckets you'll group by: procedural (Procedure), contextual (Concept and Process), and reference (Structure and Fact). A principle or a fact usually rides along in the section it qualifies rather than getting one of its own.

The guide has the two rules that decide the hard cases: classify by what the reader is doing rather than what the section is about, and split a section that serves two types instead of filing it under the larger half.

Write the bucket for every section down before moving anything. A page where every section lands in one bucket is a page that wasn't really classified.

3. Write the target outline before touching the file

Produce the whole heading tree, with levels, and check it against the locked list from step 1. Put it in front of the requester along with the Phase 0 diagnosis. The outline is the artifact that gets revised, not the page.

Order the groups per 03-page-structure.md, which has the order that works and a worked outline. A short concept opener can precede the procedure group; keep that group uninterrupted, and put the remaining background after it.

When a section held two types and you split it in step 2, the half that keeps the original heading text stays in its original group, so the locked anchor from step 1 survives. The new half takes a new heading and moves to the group its type belongs to.

4. Move, then add the glue the new shape needs

Move and regroup, and preserve meaning. Don't silently rewrite facts while restructuring. A pure set of moves is what makes this PR reviewable, so call out in the PR body any deletion that isn't a move.

Then:

• Add a short introduction linking each major group and saying when to use it. Skip it when a short page is already easy to scan.
• Add a group introduction, a transition where the information type changes, and an outcome after a procedure. Don't link every adjacent section.
• Put sections covering the same topic under a shared heading.

5. When the page itself should split

When a topic outgrows the page, give it its own page rather than its own group. Navigation that overflows the sidebar is one signal. A section carrying its own subsections several levels deep, sharing nothing with the rest of the page but a single word, is another.

Update every navigation entry, repoint every inbound anchor, and cross-reference the new page. Confirm the nav-registration mechanism through ask-the-docs rather than assuming it.

6. Before you submit

Re-run the step 1 grep. Every locked heading text is still present, at whatever level it ended up.

A move that only reads correctly once new content exists isn't a PR 2 move. It belongs to the branch that adds the content. Leave the section where it is, and say in the PR body which move you deferred and what it is waiting on. Otherwise PR 2 stops standing on its own, and a stack merged partway leaves the page reading worse than before.

If nothing needs to move, PR 2 doesn't exist. A page can be well organized and still need a style pass. Drop the branch and say the structure held up.