As the current Principal Technical Writer at Pinecone, Jesse Seldess understands that a centralized support ecosystem is vital for end users to educate themselves about a product.

For Pinecone, the most popular vector database used in AI applications and workloads, this holds especially true. A good portion of their users are already self-service, and Pinecone's vision is for the vast majority of users to be able to intuitively use and learn about the product on their own. This requires creating and maintaining a core knowledge base within their support infrastructure that users can effectively harness.

That's where documentation comes in.

As the key interface between developers and products, building quality documentation into customer support ecosystems is something that Jesse has found to be essential throughout his past roles at ReadySet, Cockroach Labs, and AppNexus.

With Pinecone, he aims to create a docs experience that can actively guide users from the very start.

The challenge: Searching for a docs tool to fit Pinecone's needs

Previously, Pinecone had been using ReadMe for their documentation. While the tool worked for users who wanted to manage everything through a content management system, Pinecone quickly realized they needed a platform that was a better fit for their developer-focused needs.

They were looking for a tool that could not only deliver a docs-as-code experience but also integrate well with the information they stored in their GitHub repositories.

With ReadMe, the team had to make do with a complex hybrid of steps to sync their markdown files stored in their repository to the docs platform. Their files would land in a staging environment on the platform, before being published. This meant that previewing required looking at the ReadMe staging environment after merging, which led to new PRs being opened every time they wanted to make edits.

In addition, there were numerous limitations for navigation, styling, and content customizability, and their setup was too complicated for a seamless documentation building experience.

The search: Documentation that optimizes form and function

There were three key things that Jesse looked for when selecting a new documentation tool:

1. A flexible and fast user experience. The tool had to give writers the ability to organize and reorganize information throughout the writing process with ease; it also had to have great information architecture that was intuitive to readers.
2. Tailored to end users. As a developer-facing platform, Pinecone's documentation required a docs-as-code workflow, which made working with engineers to write for engineers infinitely easier. With docs as code, Pinecone's docs operations could move much faster and create a final product that better matched the end user's needs.
3. Beautiful design with top-notch functionality. The look and feel of the platform had to be well thought out while still featuring important documentation-specific functions that many traditional aesthetic generators did not have. This included page-level functions to optimize users' reading experience, a tabbed approach to remove redundancy across the same topic, and feedback widgets.

While searching for a new tool that addressed their current pain points, Jesse learned about Mintlify from Tej Chilukuri, Senior Growth Product Manager at Pinecone. As a tool with stunning design and a docs-as-code approach, Mintlify checked all the boxes that Jesse and his team were looking for.

It was time to give Mintlify a try.

The solution: Streamlining workflows with docs as code

The biggest positive is that we are much faster; we are more productive. — Jesse Seldess, Principal Technical Writer

Since adopting Mintlify, Jesse notes that the Pinecone team has become much more productive in their docs workflow due to the simplicity of docs as code. Once a technical writer has learned the configuration, writing documentation becomes very easy and intuitive.

With Mintlify, they can now edit and add to their docs much faster than before. Whereas Pinecone had to merge a PR before they could see how it rendered in the past, the team can now access local previews during development as well as preview deployments to see exactly how the documentation would look before merging to production. Mintlify's Broken Links feature allows Pinecone to easily catch and correct any broken links for a more accessible end-user experience.

Beyond its essential functions and intuitive user design, Mintlify's customer support has been a critical factor in Pinecone's docs running experience. Mintlify acts as an extension of Pinecone's documentation team as a direct partner, effectively removing the need for an internal engineering team to maintain their docs.

Looking forward: Delivering a unified support ecosystem to end users

Pinecone has been excited about the efficacy and quality of their documentation with Mintlify. Using Mintlify has allowed the team to create a centralized knowledge base for customer self-support, and Pinecone is eager to embed their support workflow and documentation as a seamless part of their product.

With Mintlify, Pinecone can build a support ecosystem that proactively guides end users to leverage their product as best as possible from day one.

Getting started with Mintlify

We love partnering with companies like Pinecone to optimize their internal workflows and customer support ecosystem with impactful docs tools.

Want to set up docs like Pinecone? We offer a free preview of how your docs would look like on Mintlify — get started here.