Studio · documents

The user manual

What it is. A manual for the FUTURE USERS of a software: their journeys step by step, one real screenshot per step, captions in their language and their words. It is a trust document; a municipality decides with it.

What it costs. Close to nothing: the screens are captured headless by a script, and re-captured by the same script each time the product evolves. The manual never rots.

How to ask for one. Say « make the user manual of X ». The method is the skill user-manual; the demo data, captures and page come together.

The five laws

The manual never carries critique. It shows the product at its best. Problems found while capturing go to the Reference previewUI review, a separate document; when repairs land, the manual is simply re-captured.

Demo data looks like a real customer. The captures come from a demonstration tenant named like life (« Mairie de Valmont », Marie Dupont, a community garden), never from test junk. Ugly data ruins a trust document.

Real screens, always current. Every image is a real capture of the deployed product, regenerated by the scripts kept beside the manual. No mockups, no drawings, no stale screens.

Steps, not features. The manual follows what a person DOES (invite, vote, remind, close, share), one screen per gesture, numbered. The title says what the user achieves, never « User manual ».

The audience's language and words. French for a French mairie, the product's own lexicon, no admin-speak, and the promises spelled out (nothing to install, a personal link, you can change your mind).

What it looks like

A manual step: the organizer's console with live results and the invitee list
The organizer side: numbered gestures, one real console capture each.
A manual step: the participant chooses stars on the phone
The participant side: a grid of phone screens, three gestures to vote.

How it is made, in one breath

Demo first. A presentable dataset is created through the product's own API: real-sounding names, one finished consultation with results, one open mid-journey.

Capture headless. Playwright, no visible window, login by API with the token injected; a password is never typed into a form. Desktop and phone contexts, retina scale.

Write the page. House design rules, collapsible sections, one fold switch, captions with a bold lead. The finished page opens in the browser.

Keep the scripts. Setup and capture scripts live beside the captures; the manual refreshes by running them again.

For the AI

Method: skill user-manual (skills/user-manual). Reference implementation: the Vox Populi manual, 12-08-2026 (manual + captures + prepare-demo-et-capturer.cjs + complement-relancer.cjs). Review counterpart: agent ui-reviewer, page Reference previewui-review.