# Caring about documentation in the LLM era (w/ Heidi Waterhouse)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughtworks-technology-podcast-1060653/caring-about-documentation-in-the-llm-era-w-heidi-waterhouse
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughtworks-technology-podcast-1060653/caring-about-documentation-in-the-llm-era-w-heidi-waterhouse.md
Podcast: [Thoughtworks Technology Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughtworks-technology-podcast-1060653)
Published: 2025-07-24T06:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://thoughtworks.libsyn.com/caring-about-documentation-in-the-llm-era-w-heidi-waterhouse
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/thoughtworks/179_Documentation_v1_mixdown.mp3?dest-id=790869
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/thoughtworks-technology-podcast-1060653/episodes/caring-about-documentation-in-the-llm-era-w-heidi-waterhouse
Duration seconds: 2359

## Resource

In an age of vibe coding and LLMs, do we really need to care about documentation? Do we need to spend time and energy producing it — time when we could just be shipping code? Of course we do; particularly if we want to communicate and share software with other humans. To discuss documentation in 2025, Technology Podcast host Lilly Ryan is joined by Heidi Waterhouse, a very special guest with an esteemed and varied career in technical communcation. In this episode, Lilly and Heidi tackle the challenges of documentation in a world increasingly infused with AI-generated code and text, explore whether prompt engineering is really just technical writing in disguise and examine the difficulties of writing for highly specific audiences. They also cover Heidi's Progressive Delivery, an upcoming book about bridging the gap between software delivery and business value. It's due to be released in the latter part of 2025 and written alongside James Governor, Kim Harrison and Adam Zimman. Find out more about Heidi Waterhouse by visiting her website: https://heidiwaterhouse.com/ Learn more about Progressive Delivery : https://itrevolution.com/product/progressive-delivery/

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/thoughtworks-technology-podcast-1060653/episodes/caring-about-documentation-in-the-llm-era-w-heidi-waterhouse/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughtworks-technology-podcast-1060653/caring-about-documentation-in-the-llm-era-w-heidi-waterhouse.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.