Turn an undocumented application into an understandable, continuously documented system.
Critical enterprise applications often outlive the people who built them. AO uses AI-assisted code intelligence to analyse existing applications, map architecture and dependencies, explain business behaviour, document APIs and data structures, and create a living documentation layer that can evolve as the software changes.
What we're solving
- Enterprise software frequently becomes dependent on tribal knowledge.
- Documentation becomes outdated, original developers leave, and interfaces change without corresponding documentation.
- Business users know what the system appears to do but cannot explain how it works.
- Developers are afraid to change components because they do not understand downstream dependencies, and architecture diagrams no longer represent production.
- APIs may exist without accurate specifications, and new developers can spend weeks or months understanding mature systems before confidently making changes.
- In highly regulated or mission-critical environments this is more than an inconvenience — it creates operational, delivery and governance risk.
How we deliver
AO connects an AI-assisted code-intelligence capability to approved customer repositories and development environments. The tooling analyses the application structure, source code, services, interfaces, data models, dependencies, configurations and available tests to construct an understandable model of the system. That model is then used to generate and maintain documentation for different audiences. Business users receive understandable descriptions of system capabilities, processes, rules and information flows. Engineering teams receive detailed technical documentation of components, architecture, integrations, APIs, dependencies, data structures and development conventions. Where appropriate, the documentation capability can remain connected to the software-development lifecycle. When code, interfaces or architecture change, the system can identify potentially stale documentation and generate proposed updates through an approved version-control and review process. The objective is documentation that evolves with the system rather than a static document that becomes outdated immediately after a project ends.
What you receive
Executive system overview
Business capability documentation
Business-process documentation
Business-rule documentation
Application architecture
C4-style system and container diagrams where appropriate
Component documentation
Service catalogue
Dependency maps
Integration maps
API catalogue
OpenAPI specifications for HTTP APIs, in YAML or JSON
Swagger UI or equivalent rendering where useful
AsyncAPI definitions for event-driven interfaces where appropriate
Data models and entity relationship diagrams
Data dictionaries and data lineage documentation
Sequence diagrams
Authentication and authorisation flows
Configuration and environment documentation
Developer onboarding guides
Repository structure explanations
Coding and architectural conventions
Architecture Decision Records where appropriate
Known technical-debt identification
System ownership documentation
Operational runbooks where appropriate
Change-impact documentation
Business outcomes
- 01Reduce dependence on tribal knowledge.
- 02Accelerate onboarding of developers.
- 03Reduce the risk of changing mature applications.
- 04Make legacy systems easier to modernise.
- 05Give business stakeholders visibility into what software actually does.
- 06Improve API discoverability.
- 07Improve architecture governance.
- 08Keep technical documentation closer to the production reality.
- 09Make due diligence, transition and handover easier.
- 10Support regulatory and audit requirements where system documentation is required.
Stack & partners
Documentation that changes when your software changes.
AO can integrate the documentation capability into approved source-control and CI/CD workflows so that documentation follows the code rather than trailing behind it.
- Identify documentation potentially affected by a change
- Generate an updated documentation proposal
- Highlight what changed and why
- Associate documentation updates with the relevant code change
- Require normal human review and approval before publishing where governance requires it
- Maintain version history
- Help detect drift between implementation and documentation
Source code is sensitive intellectual property.
Implementation architecture is agreed with each customer. AO can support customer-controlled repositories, enterprise access controls, isolated processing environments and private or approved AI infrastructure. Only repositories and systems explicitly authorised by the customer are analysed, and repository permissions follow least-privilege principles.
- Designed around customer-approved AI infrastructure and data-governance requirements
- Explicitly authorised, least-privilege repository access
- AI-generated changes subject to human approval and normal engineering controls
- Customer-specific architecture determines data residency, model access, logging and retention
Frequently asked
Can AO document an application it did not originally build?
Yes. Documenting inherited, third-party or long-lived systems is the primary use case. The capability works from the source code, interfaces, data structures and configuration that exist today.
Does AO need access to production?
No. Analysis is normally performed against authorised repositories and non-production environments. Any access to production telemetry or configuration is agreed explicitly and governed by the customer.
What documentation can be generated?
Executive and business capability overviews, business-process and business-rule documentation, architecture and component views, service catalogues, dependency and integration maps, API catalogues, data models, data dictionaries, sequence diagrams, onboarding guides and operational runbooks where appropriate.
Can AO generate OpenAPI documentation?
Yes. HTTP interfaces can be documented as OpenAPI definitions in YAML or JSON, validated against the implementation and rendered with tooling such as Swagger UI. Event-driven interfaces can be described using AsyncAPI where appropriate.
What is the difference between OpenAPI and Swagger?
OpenAPI is the machine-readable specification standard for HTTP APIs, typically written in YAML or JSON. Swagger is the tooling ecosystem commonly used to author, validate and render OpenAPI definitions. The specification is OpenAPI; Swagger UI is one way of presenting it.
Can documentation update when code changes?
Yes. Where the capability is integrated with source control and CI/CD, a change that materially affects an interface, service, dependency or documented behaviour can trigger identification of affected documentation and a proposed update associated with that change.
Does AI-generated documentation require human review?
By default, yes. Proposed updates move through normal review and approval in version control. Unreviewed documentation is not published automatically unless the customer deliberately configures that workflow.
How is source code protected?
Source code is treated as sensitive intellectual property. Implementation architecture is agreed with each customer and can use customer-controlled repositories, enterprise access controls, isolated processing environments and private or approved AI infrastructure. Only explicitly authorised repositories are analysed, under least-privilege permissions.