Generating documentation with Amazon Q Developer
Amazon Q Developer helps you understand your code and keep documentation up to date by generating READMEs for your code.
Amazon Q can produce new documentation and update existing documentation in your codebase. By analyzing your project, code objects, and dependencies within your codebase, Amazon Q can document complex coding concepts and update documentation based on new code changes.
To generate documents, you open a project or workspace in your IDE and enter
/doc in the chat. After you choose the type of documentation
update you want to work on, Amazon Q will analyze your code, generate documentation, and
provide a diff with the changes it made. You can accept the proposed changes, or provide
feedback with additional changes you want Amazon Q to make.
For information on supported IDEs for this feature, see Supported IDEs. For information on supported languages, see Language support for documentation generation.
Topics
Use cases
Amazon Q can perform the following tasks from the chat panel in the IDE.
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Create new documentation – Amazon Q can create new READMEs for your project based on the code in the selected folder. If you already have a README and choose to create a new README, Amazon Q will overwrite your existing README, not update it. You still have the option to review the new content before Amazon Q overwrites your original README.
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Make specific updates – You can describe the changes you’d like Amazon Q to make to your README in natural language. You can do so by updating an existing README and then choosing the option to make a specific change. After Amazon Q generates documentation, you have the option to describe additional changes you want it to make. You can request updates like adding a section, removing an existing section, or elaborating on an existing section.
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Review new code and suggest documentation updates – After you make code changes, Amazon Q can review the new code and suggest associated updates to your README.
Supported file types
Amazon Q reviews your source code and configuration files, including but not limited to the following files types, when generating documentation:
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.template files
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requirements.txt
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package.json
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tsconfig.json
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Dockerfile
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.git/config
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LICENSE
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LICENSE.md
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CONTRIBUTING
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CONTRIBUTING.md
Amazon Q filters out files or folders defined in a .gitignore file. If you want to
exclude any files or folders from being reviewed for documentation generation, you can
include them in a .gitignore file in your project or workspace.
Quotas
Documentation generation with Amazon Q maintains the following quotas:
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Existing README size – The maximum size of an existing README that Amazon Q can review to update documentation. If the README exceeds this quota, Amazon Q isn’t able to update the existing documentation.
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Code project size – The maximum size of the project or workspace that Amazon Q can use to generate documentation.
Even if you choose a smaller folder to generate documentation for, the parent project or workspace must be within this quota.
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Document generations per task – The number of times Amazon Q can generate new documentation for a given task, including the initial document generation.
| Resource | Quota |
|---|---|
| Existing README size | 15 KB |
| Code project size | 200 MB uncompressed 50 MB compressed |
| Document generations per task | 3 |
