Documentation Overview

This page outlines the ethos, objectives & features of the docs, giving you a clear navigational roadmap

Learning is different for everyone, with user preferences as unique as the community across the following:

• Format (like text, engineering references or video)
• Style of learning (hands-on, reading, visual)
• Content depth (ELI5 to advanced technical)
• AI helpers and search preferences

These docs aim to cater, as much as possible, to all segments of the vibrant Livepeer Community.

Have a suggestion for improvement? Check out our Contribute to the Docs page to share feedback or submit contributions.

Documentation Ethos

These docs aim to make it easy for all users to:

• Find the information they are looking for - through intuitive navigation, powerful search, and AI assistance
• Understand the Livepeer protocol & products - with clear explanations from zero to hero
• Navigate the Livepeer ecosystem - discover tools, services, and community resources
• Build on the Livepeer protocol - with comprehensive guides, API references, and code examples
• Use Livepeer & Ecosystem products - step-by-step tutorials and quickstarts

The documentation utilises a streamlined setup and the Mintlify format, providing a modern, responsive, and accessible experience.

Documentation Philosophy

1. Documentation is not static. It is infrastructure
2. AI is the new search, and discoverable products are AI-first
3. Agents are the new docs consumers and information should be atructured accordingly

Documentation As Infrastructure

Documentation As Infrastructure

The foundational premise of this engagement, articulated before a single page was written, is that documentation is not editorial output.

It is infrastructure.

This principle reframes how investment in documentation should be understood, measured, and maintained.

Infrastructure has properties that editorial content does not: it must be maintained under load, it degrades without active governance, it requires testing, automation, and versioning.

They are the scaffolding that makes every page reliable, maintainable, and improvable by anyone.

Eposide Details

Inferact is a new AI infrastructure company founded by the creators and core maintainers of vLLM.

Its mission is to build a universal, open-source inference layer that makes large AI models faster, cheaper, and more reliable to run across any hardware, model architecture, or deployment environment.

Together, they broke down how modern AI models are actually run in production, why “inference” has quietly become one of the hardest problems in AI infrastructure, and how the open-source project vLLM emerged to solve it.

The conversation also looked at why the vLLM team started Inferact and their vision for a universal inference layer that can run any model, on any chip, efficiently.

Documentation Frameworks & References

D.O.C.S (Documentation)

The D.O.C.S principles focus on creating high-quality, effective, and user-focused technical content by ensuring it is clear, concise, comprehensive, and consistent.

Key principles include writing from the user’s perspective, using plain language, keeping documentation up-to-date, making it skimmable with structured formatting, and providing concrete, actionable examples.

Core Documentation Principles

• Clear & Concise: Use simple language to explain complex ideas, avoiding jargon. Get to the point quickly and remove unnecessary information.
• Comprehensive & Consistent: Cover all necessary information (endpoints, variations, edge cases) and maintain consistent formatting and terminology throughout.
• Structured & Skimmable: Use headings, subheadings, lists, and tables to make content easy to navigate. Place the most important information first.
• User-Focused: Write from the reader’s perspective, focusing on their tasks and goals rather than just technical features.
• Accurate & Updated: Regularly review and update documentation to reflect the current state of the product.
• Concrete & Interactive: Include real-world examples, code snippets, and tutorials to help users immediately apply the information.

Docs as Code (Modern Approach)

Modern documentation often follows a “Docs as Code” approach, treating documentation with the same rigor as software code.

• Integrated: Documentation is part of the development lifecycle, not an afterthought.
• Version Control: Stored alongside code in repositories (e.g., Git).
• Automation: Automated testing and building of documentation.
• Collaboration: Allows for pull requests and reviews, enabling both writers and developers to contribute.

Best Practices

• Define Terms: Clearly define acronyms and technical terms.
• Inclusive Language: Use language that is welcoming to a diverse audience.
• Identify Audience Needs: Map documentation to specific user tasks (e.g., tutorials, how-to guides, API reference).
• Record Rationale: Explain why something was done, not just what was done.

Diátaxis Framework

The Diátaxis framework is a systematic approach that organizes documentation into four distinct quadrants based on two axes: Action vs. Reflection and Learning vs. Working.

The Four Quadrants of Diátaxis

• Tutorials (Learning-Oriented): Hands-on lessons that guide a beginner through a series of steps to achieve a result. Their primary goal is to provide a successful learning experience, not just solve a problem.
• How-To Guides (Task-Oriented): Practical directions that help an experienced user complete a specific, real-world task. They focus on the “how” and assume the user already has basic competence.
• Reference (Information-Oriented): Technical descriptions of the machinery-API keys, classes, commands, and schemas. They must be neutral, accurate, and easy to consult quickly.
• Explanation (Understanding-Oriented): Discussions that clarify and illuminate a particular topic. They provide context, background, and rationale (“the why”) rather than instructions.

The core principle is to keep these four types separate. Mixing them-such as putting long technical explanations inside a step-by-step tutorial-confuses the reader and makes the documentation harder to maintain.

References:

Your docs are your infrastructure

OpenClaw And The Future Of Personal AI Agents

Docs as Code

D.O.C.S (Documentation Principles)

AI Is the New Search

AI Is the New Search

“AI is not going to end the world-but it is going to end the web as we’ve known it. AI is already upending the economic covenant of the internet that’s existed since the advent of search.”

Chris Dixon

Managing Partner, a16z

For over a decade, SEO - optimising for Google - was the primary lever for documentation discoverability.

That paradigm is being rapidly displaced.

LLMs now index, summarise, and recommend infrastructure products at scale. Developers increasingly begin their research with ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini rather than a search engine.

This means documentation is now being read, evaluated, and cited by machines before it reaches humans.

The implication is structural, not cosmetic.

Semantic headings, stable canonical URLs, machine-readable frontmatter, OpenAPI spec integration, AEO, AI-integrated pipelines and llms.txt files are not “nice to have” - they are the new minimum viable distribution layer.

Agents Are the New Users

Agents Are the New Users

The next wave beyond AI-assisted search is AI agent consumption: automated systems that query documentation to generate code, answer support tickets, configure infrastructure, or build integrations without human intervention.

These agents require documentation that is not merely readable but executable - with explicit preconditions, invariants, verification steps, and failure modes.

It requires specifically serving content designed for agent consumption and context windows.

User Journeys

These docs are intended to provide a clear zero-to-hero user journey for the many talented folks in the Livepeer Ecosystem.

Recommended Paths

1. Understanding Livepeer - All users interested in understanding the Livepeer Network, Protocol & Ecosystem

   • Start with: About Livepeer → Core Concepts

2. End-Users - Looking for Livepeer Realtime Video or AI plug & play products

   • Start with: Get Started → Quickstarts

3. Developers - Building on the Livepeer Video or AI Protocol from tinkerers to founders & enterprise clients

   • Start with: Developers Portal → Building on Livepeer

4. GPU Providers & Data Centres - Bringing compute to the Livepeer Network

   • Start with: Orchestrators Portal → Setting Up an Orchestrator

5. Livepeer Token Holders - Looking to stake LPT or participate in open governance

   • Start with: LP Token Portal → Staking & Delegation

6. Gateway Operators - Running infrastructure to route jobs on the network

   • Start with: Gateways Portal → Run a Gateway

Documentation Features

The Livepeer documentation includes several features designed to enhance your experience:

• 🔍 Powerful Search - Find content quickly with semantic search
• 🤖 AI Assistant - Get answers to your questions directly in the docs
• 📱 Responsive Design - Access docs on any device
• 🌓 Dark & Light Themes - Choose your preferred viewing mode
• 📑 Tab Navigation - Organised by user role and interest
• 🔗 Version Switching - Access both v1 (legacy) and v2 (current) documentation
• 💬 Feedback Mechanisms - Share your thoughts on any page
• 📚 Component Library - Reference for all custom components

For detailed information about these features, see the Documentation Guide and Features & AI Integrations pages.