DOCS LIKE STRIPE and the documentation cargo cult

October 11, 2025

DOCS LIKE STRIPE. WE WANT DOCS LIKE STRIPE. Every tech writer has heard this.

At a previous role, WE WANT DOCS LIKE STRIPE was directed at me, with full eye contact during a meeting, by a leadership team that refused to give me any money for tooling or development resources. I cracked and said "Stripe has like seven engineers on their doc tooling alone, I'm not sure what you expect from me with my current resourcing. Could you help me prioritize?"

I left shortly after this conversation. Trust, it's been one of many times I've heard this in job interviews, chats with founders, really any conversation about documentation where the tech writers were outnumbered. Tech writers love lambasting this request when we get together to talk shop, pointing out that companies always want docs like Stripe's, but but they don't ever want to invest in docs like Stripe does.

What does DOCS LIKE STRIPE even mean? No one that I've asked outside of tech writing has ever been able to expand on this enough to qualify as a satisfying answer. No one. I remember the elation when Stripe open sourced Markdoc. "Finally! I can have docs like Stripe!" I distinctly remember those folks being heartbroken when they eventually realized that Markdoc was just a part of the tooling. It gets you nowhere close to that DOCS LIKE STRIPE experience.

As technical writers, it's so clear to us why we can't have docs like Stripe, but for the rest of the world, let's talk it out.

DOCS LIKE STRIPE is cargo cult

This leads me to my whole point: DOCS LIKE STRIPE is a cargo cult.

People who say this think that the docs are in the "look" or the tool used to build them, or even their perceived comprehensiveness or complexity. They think things like this:

• If we have the same tool Stripe uses for their docs, our docs will be that good too!
• If we make the docs look like Stripe's, our docs will be good too!
• If we have a lot of docs like Stripe, our docs will be good too!

They see the finished product, without any understanding of the kind of work and care that it took to bring it into existence, and say "Yes, just like that!" and then try to reverse engineer it based on appearances without ever going beyond the presentation layer.

I'm sure I have some fundamental misunderstandings about how other vocations work. I could make some wild guesses about sales or like, what designers do. But the difference is that if a sales person or designer told me what they would need in order to accomplish "Design like Apple" or "Sell like Salesforce in 2015", I'd listen to them, since they're more familiar with the terroir that produces the well-oiled sales machine or what made Apple's design philosophy so good for so long.

so, listen to me

You cannot use cargo cult tactics to get good docs. You can try, but you'll get docs that just look good but don't serve their purpose.

You wanna know how to stop the cargo cult stuff and get better docs? I could write an entire book on this (I probably won't), but it starts with this† -- ask yourself what is it about Stripe's docs that makes them good?

• Is it how comprehensive they seem?
• Is it the voice or tone?
• Is it all the example apps and tutorials?
• Is it that sick CLI tool they have built into the docs?

Think about what they're doing that you want to bite and then figure out how to do that in your own way, for your own project. Don't try to just copy their presentation layer and call it a day. Yes -- form is function with docs in a lot of cases, but it's more important to have well-written, findable, and accurate documentation. If you don't know how to do both (sexy docs and good docs), then start with good docs -- you can church them up later.

fight in your weight class

Finally, there are a lot of other good doc sites out there these days. If you're not in payments, maybe Stripe's docs aren't the ones you should be basing your documentation plan on. If you're not operating on Stripe's scale, they might be too aspirational for you right now. I'd recommend figuring out who the competitors are in your space and doing a competitive analysis on just the documentation and developer enablement stuff.

Take 5 minutes today, figure out who your competitors are. Come up with a few doc site features you want to compare and just do a short competitive analysis. Here's a great opening question, no charge: How many clicks does it take to get to the docs from the main site?

This exercise will aid in the documentation arm's race, whether or not you know you're in one.

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