Podcast Summary: "How Mintlify Is Rebuilding Documentation for Coding Agents"

The a16z Show – January 23, 2026
Host: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), featuring Han Wang and Hanbi Lee (Mintlify co-founders), Jennifer Lee (a16z General Partner), and Yokoli (a16z Partner)

Episode Overview

This episode examines how Mintlify, the innovative documentation platform, is redefining the landscape of software documentation in an era dominated by coding agents and AI-driven developer tools. The conversation dives deep into the evolution from human-focused documentation to content that now serves both people and AI agents—a shift that has profound implications for developer productivity, knowledge management, and the future of software infrastructure. The Mintlify co-founders, Han Wang and Hanbi Lee, join a16z partners to recount their entrepreneurial journey, product philosophies, and the technical and cultural forces propelling documentation’s central role in modern software organizations.

Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. The Evolution and Importance of Documentation in the AI Era

• Documentation as Infrastructure, Not Afterthought
  Historically, docs were written for humans, often after a product shipped; accuracy lagged as products evolved. With coding agents and AI tools now reading and acting on documentation, outdated or incorrect docs can directly break systems, elevating the need for accurate, continuously updated documentation.

  “Docs are no longer just explanatory, but also operational input. When they're wrong or outdated, systems break.” – Podcast Narrator (01:27)

• Shift from Human to Agent-Focused Docs
  Mintlify’s founders describe how the role of documentation changed dramatically in just a couple of years, from developer support and education to being critical infrastructure read by AI agents, bots, and internal tools.

  "What initially started was just like a very simple platform for people…really start to transition to being something for humans and AI." – Han Wang (02:22)

2. Mintlify’s Founding Story: Pivots, Failure, and Product-Market Fit

• Origin Focused on Developer Pain Points
  The co-founders recount starting Mintlify after many pivots and failures, always remaining focused on enabling builders. Their deep empathy for developers, based on lived experience, informed their approach.

  “It wasn't all about docs at first. It was just like, how do we go build something that can enable people to build a little bit better, a little bit faster…Because we know that building a company takes such a long time horizon…Pick a space you care so deeply about.” – Han Wang (05:23)

• Validation Through Failure and Customer Love
  The breakthrough moment came after showing a doc prototype to a friend's startup:

  "That's when I realized the beauty of having failed so many times…When something did, there was no mistaking it.” – Han Wang (08:22)

3. Winning Customer Love: Doing Things That Don’t Scale

• Manual Migrations, Extra-mile Support
  Early Mintlify customers were wooed with personalized migrations, grammar fixes, and restructuring by the founders themselves—work that “didn’t scale,” but created memorable experiences and deepened customer loyalty.

  “It’s still the small things that don’t scale that really spark customer love…go the extra mile in a way that people don't expect.” – Han Wang (03:38, 11:33)

• Advice from Paul Graham:

  “This thing that you’re doing now is going to be the thing that you’re going to do forever. Just live with it.” – via Han Wang (12:15)

4. AI’s Outsize Role: Documentation as Operational Input

• Agents as Documentation Consumers
  Not only support teams and devs, but also AI agents now use documentation as their source of truth. This makes up-to-date docs even more critical—and accelerates Mintlify’s mission to self-healing, self-updating documentation.

  “AI agents are the ones ingesting the content…I’m constantly talking to founders who are talking to me about how the documentation is the source of truth for making sure that their agents are working properly.” – Hanbi Lee (14:34)

• Self-Healing Docs and Context-Aware AI
  The rise of AI models mature enough to support self-updating documentation marks a fundamental shift.

  “Opus 4 or 5 was actually a big unlock for us…The model is reliable and consistent enough that it can actually go do it.” – Han Wang (28:28)

5. The Expanding Surface Area: From Dev Docs to Knowledge Management

• Docs Beyond Developers
  Mintlify is now used for internal docs, help centers, HR policies, and even driver’s license exam guides.

  “In fact, actually we recently replaced our entire internal knowledge stack with just Mintlify as well—largely because of the automated AI tooling, the Q and A bots.” – Han Wang (17:56)

• New Paradigm: Markdown and English as Universal Interfaces
  More people—even outside engineering—are writing in Markdown as large language models normalize this "syntax."

  “The language of LLMs, right? So the syntax that might be somewhat foreign for most people is now commonplace.” – Han Wang (19:54) “English language is the next hottest new programming language.” – Hanbi Lee quoting Andrej Karpathy (30:14)

6. The Changing Nature of Documentation’s Use and Creation

• Less Focus on Looks, More on Content Quality
  As agents consume more docs, visual appeal recedes in favor of structured, up-to-date, and richly contextual content.

  “If you have the nicest developer experience in the world, but the content is just absolute crap, then it doesn’t even matter.” – Han Wang (31:29)

• Authors and Consumers Expanding
  Not only do developers contribute, but non-technical staff and agents both write and consume docs—reshaping editorial workflows.

• Human and AI Coexist as Doc Readers

  “Docs are 50% for humans, 50% for AI…maybe 10% for humans, 90% for AI by the end of the year.” – Han Wang (32:39)
  But, Han Wang emphasizes, humans will always need some documentation "front to back," like books (32:50).

7. Go-To-Market and Working with Demanding Customers

• Winning Top Logos by Responsiveness and Iteration
  Serving fast-moving, boundary-pushing customers like Anthropic or Microsoft is described as both a privilege and an inspiration, raising Mintlify’s own standards for speed and support.

  “You would send a slack message…someone’s going to respond within…10 seconds.” – Han Wang (37:09) “Some of our biggest customers came into our slack community on like a Saturday…would end up becoming a huge customer.” – Hanbi Lee (38:50)

• Learning from User-Inspired Features
  Many innovations came directly from customer suggestions, like multi-language pipelines first prototyped by Anthropic.

  “No, we built a pipeline that translated them all in real time…You should go do it too for your other customers. And then we did.” – Han Wang (40:09)

8. Vision for the Future

• Impact on the Next Generation
  The founders remain motivated by enabling builders—be they developers, new AI-powered creators, or other knowledge workers.

  “As of last month…20 million people came across a site that was powered by Mintlify, whether they know it or not.” – Han Wang (42:07) "There were probably many of them that was like the Han when he was 11 years old, that learned how to code for the first time…" – Han Wang (42:15)

• Excitement for AI Agents and Broadening User Base

  “It's so cool to build AI agents because you build something and then it surprises you at what it could be doing… excited to continue to iterate on that process." – Hanbi Lee (42:39)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Pivoting:

  “A year and a half of wandering in the desert while chewing glass is probably the best way I can describe that.”
  — Han Wang (05:43)

• On Initial Customer Reactions:

  "How do I get this set up right now?...I literally went in, changed it over. And that was our first customer. And that first customer led us to the second and the fifth, the tenth hundredth, and now into thousands."
  — Han Wang (10:49)

• On Doing Things That Don’t Scale:

  “It's still the small things that don't scale that really spark customer love.”
  — Han Wang (11:33)

• On AI’s Doc-Centric Era:

  “AI agents are the ones ingesting the content…documentation is the source of truth for making sure that their agents are working properly.”
  — Hanbi Lee (14:34)

• On the Pains of Out-of-Date Docs:

  "No one ever feels good and has gone to bed and be like, oh, I have great docs. If they think about it at all."
  — Han Wang (25:53)

• On the Shift in Product Emphasis:

  "I think the days in which the battle for the developer experience being in how nice it is...is just way past us. That was 2010, really. The frontier now is about how good the content is."
  — Han Wang (31:23)

• On Customer-Driven Innovation:

  "All of their docs were suddenly from English to 12 other languages…they built a pipeline that translated them all in real time…You should go do it too for your other customers. And then we did."
  — Han Wang (40:09)

• On Motivation and Scale:

  "What really gets me out of bed in the morning is knowing that as of last month, 20 million people came across a site that was powered by [Mintlify]."
  — Han Wang (42:07)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [00:00–02:04] – Introduction & historical context of documentation
• [02:04–07:41] – Mintlify’s origin story and journey through pivots
• [07:41–13:45] – First customers, winning conversion, early hustle
• [13:46–16:27] – Product intuition and the role of AI in documentation
• [16:34–21:24] – How Mintlify is used today, expansion beyond engineering
• [21:24–24:05] – Adapting to the AI revolution in real time; product development philosophies
• [24:05–33:14] – Technical and organizational challenges in documentation maintenance, design for agents vs. humans
• [33:14–35:47] – Cycles of software creation/consumption; new abstraction layers for AI
• [35:47–41:06] – Go-to-market lessons, working with top-tier customers, product co-creation with users
• [41:06–End] – The future of Mintlify, community inspiration, broadening impact

Conclusion

This episode offers a nuanced look at the rapid evolution of software documentation and how Mintlify is staying ahead by embracing customer-centricity, AI integration, and unscalable early-stage tactics. The conversation is a valuable resource for founders, engineers, and anyone seeking to understand how foundational knowledge infrastructure is transforming to meet the needs of both human and machine creators.