Automating cross-repo documentation with GitHub Agentic Workflows
GitHub’s Aspire team automated cross-repository documentation using GitHub Agentic Workflows, reducing median time-to-docs to 44.8 hours without additional staff or retraining.
The Aspire team, a small group of 10 developers building distributed application tools, previously faced delays in documenting merged features. Documentation often lagged behind releases, requiring writers to reverse-engineer changes from closed pull requests. To address this, the team integrated GitHub Agentic Workflows, an AI-driven automation tool from GitHub Next, into their existing workflows. This shift eliminated the need for manual documentation processes and reduced the median time to merge documentation pull requests to 44.8 hours for releases 13.3 and 13.4.
The automation operates across two separate repositories: microsoft/aspire for product code and microsoft/aspire.dev for documentation. GitHub Agentic Workflows enables secure cross-repository interactions without granting broad repository-scoped tokens, addressing security concerns while maintaining efficiency. The workflow, triggered by merged pull requests, uses a deterministic target branch resolver to map milestones to release branches. It then drafts documentation based on code changes, ensuring alignment with existing writing conventions and Starlight components.
A companion job posts a comment on the original pull request linking to the draft documentation, notifying the engineer who merged the feature. This creates a feedback loop where engineers review and refine the draft, ensuring accuracy before publication. The workflow’s design adheres to strict security policies, limiting token access to only the product and documentation repositories and restricting write operations to approved pipelines. This approach satisfied security reviews while maintaining operational reliability.
Over a 30-day period from May 3 to June 2, 2026, the workflow consistently generated 82 feature-documentation pull requests, all reviewed by the engineers who implemented the changes. The automation shifted the team’s definition of a completed feature to include documentation, reducing the burden on writers who now focus on higher-value tasks such as narrative pages and conceptual guides. The Aspire team credits GitHub Agentic Workflows and the Starlight documentation platform for enabling this transformation.