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Welcome to Instruction Manuel

· 3 min read
Manny Silva
Manny Silva
Technical Writer & Engineer | Head of Documentation at Skyflow

Welcome to Instruction Manuel! I'm Manny Silva, a technical writer and engineer who spends too much time thinking about documentation, developer experience, and whatever else catches my attention in the tech world.

What this is​

This blog is my space to explore, experiment, and share. You'll find thoughts on documentation practices, engineering challenges, tools I'm building or breaking, and the occasional tangent into whatever has captured my interest lately.

Much of my work centers on documentation—specifically making it more resilient, testable, and sustainable. I've built tools like Doc Detective and written about "Docs as Tests" strategies, and you'll see content on those topics here. Some posts may be cross-posted from docsastests.com or other projects I'm involved with.

But this isn't just a documentation blog. It's a place for ideas that don't fit neatly into other categories.

What I do​

As Head of Documentation at Skyflow, I build systems and strategies that help documentation teams keep pace with rapid product development. Before that, I worked at Apple and Google, where I learned that good documentation is part process, part tooling, and part persistence.

My approach is practical: manage your docs well, automate what you can, and focus on making things sustainable for the long term.

What you'll find here​

Expect a mix of:

  • Documentation strategy: Testing, automation, CI/CD integration, and scaling practices
  • Tools and frameworks: Open-source projects, experiments, and lessons learned from building them
  • Developer experience: APIs, SDKs, and the intersection of docs and product design
  • Cross-posts: Content from Docs as Tests and other projects
  • Whatever else: Conference recaps, hot takes, technical deep dives, or random curiosities

The common thread is curiosity about making technical content better, whether that's through better tools, better processes, or better thinking.

The philosophy​

Documentation should be managed. That means version control, testing, automation, and integration into development workflows. It means catching problems before users encounter them and building systems that make quality maintainable.

But it also means experimenting, iterating, and accepting that nothing is ever finished. The best documentation evolves with the product and the people using it.

Get in touch​

I'm always interested in hearing from people working on similar problems or exploring adjacent ideas:

Looking forward to sharing insights and learning from the community!