When Documentation Stops Rotting: From Karpathy's LLM Wiki to Software Engineering Documentation

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0800

Humans write the original documents and make decisions. LLMs handle synthesis, updates, and consistency checks. Documentation is no longer a static artifact that rots the moment it’s written — it becomes a living knowledge base continuously maintained by LLMs.

An Age-Old Problem

Every software engineer has experienced this: you join a project, open the docs, and find the README still describing a module deleted six months ago, API docs with fields that don’t match the code at all, and architecture diagrams showing a design from two versions back. You ask a colleague, who says, “Don’t bother with the docs — just read the code.”

Frontend-Driven Development in the Vibe Coding Era

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0800

When AI becomes a routine tool in development, how should we change the way we work?

The Evolution of Three Development Models

Before discussing frontend-driven development, let me walk through three fundamentally different development models and how they’ve evolved:

1. Backend-Driven Development (The Traditional Way)

Product requirements → Backend designs API (1-2 weeks) → Frontend builds pages (2 weeks) → Integration

A real pain point:

Last year I worked on an e-commerce admin system where the team followed this model. By the time the frontend received the API documentation, we were already in week three of the development cycle. I spent two weeks implementing the order management module according to the docs. When we demoed it to the product manager, she frowned: “Why can’t the order list be filtered by status? Users definitely need this.”

Software Engineering on Zhanwei Wang

When Documentation Stops Rotting: From Karpathy's LLM Wiki to Software Engineering Documentation

An Age-Old Problem

Frontend-Driven Development in the Vibe Coding Era

The Evolution of Three Development Models

1. Backend-Driven Development (The Traditional Way)