Practical, copy-paste frameworks for turning what you know into something anyone can use — your teammates, your future self, your AI tools, and the people who come after you.
Companion repository for the lightning talk "Documentation as a Love Language for the Future You" — WordCamp Europe 2026, Kraków.
Pick the thing in front of you:
| I need to... | Use this |
|---|---|
| Decide if something's worth documenting | Decision Filter |
| Capture something fast (10 min) | 10-Minute Doc |
| Document a repeatable process | SOP template |
| Document a technical procedure | Runbook template |
| Hand off at end of day / shift | Daily Handoff |
| Get my AI tool to help | Prompts · Agent Skills |
| Check if a doc is ready to share | Checklists |
Copy-paste, fill-in templates. Each one has a blank version and a filled-in WordPress example.
- 10-Minute Doc — the lightweight starting point (5 pillars)
- SOP — for repeatable processes (one task per SOP)
- Runbook — for technical procedures, written for 3am
- Daily Handoff — async-first, under 5 minutes
- Decision Filter — the three "Future You" questions
- Frameworks to Use — Diátaxis, README-driven development, the YES/NO guide, and more
- Prompts — copy-paste prompts for drafting docs with any AI tool
- Agent Skills — reusable skills to save into Claude, Copilot, custom GPTs, and similar
- Quality Checklist — five checks for any doc
- Handoff Checklist — the 30-second pre-handoff check
- SOP Checklist — before you tell people to rely on it
Documentation isn't overhead. It's an act of care — for the person who comes after you, for someone who doesn't share your context, and for yourself six months from now.
The biggest barrier isn't laziness or time. It's that "write documentation" feels paralyzing, while "answer these five questions" feels doable. Everything here exists to lower that activation energy.
Draft the note past you wishes present you had found.
Should I document this? → Decision Filter
What kind of doc is it? → Frameworks (Diátaxis)
Capture it fast → 10-Minute Doc
Repeatable process → SOP
Technical procedure → Runbook
End-of-day handoff → Daily Handoff
Want AI to help → Prompts / Agent Skills
Ready to share? → Checklists
Contributions are welcome — especially examples from your own work, translations, and fixes for anything unclear. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
These are the templates I wish I'd had years ago. Now they're yours. Fork them, adapt them, translate them.
Author: Birgit Olzem (@CoachBirgit) Head of Support Operations at Codeable · WordPress contributor since 2003 · Founder of the WordPress DEIB Working Group
Talk: Documentation as a Love Language for the Future You · WordCamp Europe 2026
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Share and adapt freely, including commercially — just give credit and keep the same license on what you build.