I need complete help documentation for my product
The Build a product help centre recipe turns a real product into a public, searchable set of guides. It is for a connected AI that can inspect your product or repository as well as work on your bernard account.
The prompt
“Build a complete help centre for my product. Start by asking what is public, what is confidential and where you can inspect the real product.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
That distinction matters. Bernard holds the site, its draft, uploaded images, search and publishing controls. Your connected AI supplies the product evidence. If it cannot inspect the product, it stops rather than making up how something works.
Before you start
Have these ready:
- the bernard site to use, or permission to make a new scratch site
- access to the product, repository or an approved test environment
- the readers and roles the help centre is for
- a clear list of confidential or excluded areas
- a test account filled only with synthetic data
- a person who will approve the scope, screenshots and final publication
Open your connected AI and use the prompt at the top of this page. The recipe asks all of its setup questions together, so the important boundaries are settled before it touches the site.
What the recipe does
1. Maps the product
The AI walks the real journeys, roles, permissions, settings, integrations, failure states and technical reference. It turns these into a coverage ledger: each item is marked covered, excluded or unknown.
You then see the proposed guide families and page list. Nothing is written until you approve that plan.
2. Captures safe screenshots
Screenshots come from the approved test environment, never a customer’s account. The recipe records the screen and state, viewport, crop, alt text and product version for each one. You approve the set before it is uploaded.
After upload, Bernard reads each image’s real dimensions. This prevents a narrow crop being declared as a wide screen and then rendered several times taller than the article around it. Images stay inside the reading column and can open at full size where that is useful.
3. Writes guides around reader goals
Each guide covers one job. It starts with the outcome, then gives prerequisites, numbered steps, what success looks like, common failure states and the relevant permission or privacy notes. Related guides carry the reader to the next job.
The home page stays short. It groups guides by what somebody wants to do, separates task guidance from technical reference, and adds text search over the guide cards themselves.
4. Checks the whole help centre
Before you see the result, the recipe checks every changed page, every link,
the sitemap, the AI-readable llms.txt file and the site’s search instructions.
It renders the home page and representative guides at phone and desktop widths,
then checks images, headings, navigation, selected sections, search controls,
line length, overflow and footer spacing.
You receive the draft preview with the coverage ledger, exclusions, known gaps, screenshot register and verification summary. Publishing is a separate final approval. When you approve it, the recipe publishes the complete draft and checks the fresh live version, including search and full-size screenshots.
Keep it useful
Product documentation is not finished when it launches. When the product changes, run the recipe again with the changed journey. It reopens the coverage ledger, updates the affected guides and replaces only the screenshots that no longer match the product.
That gives the help centre a maintenance rule instead of a rewrite date.
Questions people ask
- Can Bernard work out the documentation from my product?
- A connected AI can inspect the product, repository or approved test environment you give it, then build the help centre in bernard. It will stop rather than invent a screen or product behaviour it cannot verify.
- Will it include screenshots?
- Yes. The recipe uses an approved test account and synthetic data, asks you to approve the screenshot set, measures every uploaded image instead of guessing its size, and checks how each one renders on a phone and a desktop.
- Can it include customer or candidate data?
- No. Use synthetic names, emails and content. The recipe explicitly excludes real customer data, personal data, secrets, private URLs and confidential implementation detail.
- Does it publish the help centre automatically?
- No. You see the coverage plan before writing, approve the screenshot set, and receive a complete draft preview and verification summary. Publishing happens only after you explicitly approve that complete draft.
- How does search work?
- The help home uses the guides themselves as its index. Bernard adds in-page text search and a small set of useful guide families, without a separate search database to maintain.