Free documentation templates for software teams.
Five documents every engineering team writes sooner or later. Each page explains what goes in every section, with examples you can copy.
Last updated October 30, 2026
README template
A free README template for software projects: the nine sections that get a new developer from clone to running code, with copy-ready markdown, a quickstart block and contribution notes.
Best for: Open source projects, internal services and libraries that other teams depend on
Open the template- Open
API documentation template
Auth, errors, pagination and an endpoint reference developers can try.
- 01Overview
- 02Authentication
- 03Quickstart
- 04Errors
- 05Pagination
- 06Rate limits
- 07Webhooks
- 08Endpoint reference
- 09Changelog and deprecations
9 sections, a guide section plus one page per resource
- Open
Engineering onboarding guide
A new engineer's first two weeks, from laptop setup to first deploy.
- 01Welcome and how to use this guide
- 02Accounts and access, day one
- 03Local development setup
- 04Architecture tour
- 05How work flows
- 06First tasks
- 07The first two weeks, day by day
- 08On-call and incidents
- 09Who to ask
9 sections, one page plus links
- Open
Architecture Decision Record (ADR)
One significant technical decision: context, choice, consequences.
- 01Title and number
- 02Status
- 03Context
- 04Decision
- 05Consequences
- 06Alternatives considered
- 07References
7 sections, one to two pages
- Open
Incident runbook
What to do when a specific alert fires, written for someone half awake.
- 01Summary
- 02Severity
- 03First five minutes
- 04Diagnosis
- 05Mitigation
- 06Communication
- 07Rollback and recovery checks
- 08Follow-up
8 sections, one page per alert or failure mode
Every template opens in the Signcodify editor with its sections already in place, so you start filling in instead of formatting.
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