Automating Documentation Review in Your CI/CD Pipeline

You lint your code. You run tests. You check for security vulnerabilities.

But what about your documentation?

Most teams treat docs as second-class citizens in CI/CD. Code gets automated quality gates; docs get... a human reading them whenever they have time.

Here's how to change that.

The Problem: Documentation Review is a Bottleneck

Every docs PR in our repo sat waiting for review. Someone had to manually check:

• Are headings capitalized correctly?


• Did the author use our terminology ("click" not "select")?


• Are all the links still valid?


• Is the structure consistent with other pages?

This was tedious for reviewers and slow for contributors. Engineers would submit docs, wait days for feedback, then get a list of nitpicky style fixes.

We decided to automate the mechanical stuff.

What We Automated

The Setup: GitHub Actions + EkLine

We use EkLine for automated docs review. Here's our workflow:

name: Documentation Review



on:

  pull_request:

    paths:

      - 'docs/**'

      - '*.md'



jobs:

  docs-review:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:

      - uses: actions/checkout@v4



      - name: EkLine Docs Review

        uses: ekline-io/ekline-github-action@v6

        with:

          content_dir: ./docs

          ek_token: ${{ secrets.EKLINE_TOKEN }}

          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

          reporter: github-pr-review

That's it. When someone opens a PR that touches documentation, EkLine:

1. Analyzes the changed files against our style guide


2. Checks all links


3. Validates terminology


4. Leaves inline comments directly on the PR

What the Feedback Looks Like

Instead of a wall of linter output in CI logs, contributors get comments exactly where issues are:

The feedback is actionable: "Define 'MCP', if it's unfamiliar to the audience." with a suggestion to fix it.

Configuring Your Style Rules

EkLine comes with presets (Google, Microsoft), but you can customize:

# .ekline/config.yaml

rules:

  headings:

    capitalization: sentence-case

  voice:

    prefer: active

  terminology:

    banned:

      - utilize  # use "use"

      - leverage # use "use"

      - click    # use "select"

    required:

      - API      # not "api" or "Api"

Results After 3 Months

The biggest win wasn't efficiency—it was contributor confidence. Engineers now get instant feedback, fix issues themselves, and submit cleaner PRs. They're not waiting days just to learn they used the wrong heading style.

Bonus: Automating the "What Needs Updating?" Problem

Automated review catches issues in what you submit. But there's a harder problem: knowing what should be submitted after a product change.

EkLine also has a Docs Agent that addresses this. You can prompt it:

"The user invitation flow changed from 2 steps to 3 steps"

And it will:

1. Scan your docs repo for all files mentioning invitations


2. Draft updated content


3. Create a PR with the changes

This shifts documentation maintenance from "hope someone remembers" to "tell the agent what changed." We're still rolling this out, but early results show it dramatically reduces docs drift.

Alternatives to Consider

If EkLine doesn't fit your needs:

• 
  Vale — The underlying linter many tools use. More DIY, but very flexible.


• 
  alex — Focused on inclusive language checking.


• 
  markdownlint — Basic Markdown formatting rules.

The difference with EkLine is the GitHub integration (inline PR comments) and managed style guide configs. If you want to build your own setup, Vale is excellent.

Should You Automate Docs Review?

Yes, if:

• Multiple people contribute to documentation


• You have (or want) a style guide


• Review cycles are slowing down releases


• You're already using docs-as-code

Maybe not, if:

• Solo writer on a small project


• Docs are in Confluence/Notion (no Git integration)


• Your review process works fine

Getting Started

1. Sign up at ekline.io — free for public repos, 30-day trial on Standard ($50/user/month)


2. Add the GitHub Action to your repo


3. Open a PR with docs changes


4. See the automated review

Full setup guide: docs.ekline.io

What's in Your Docs CI?

I'm curious what other teams are doing for documentation quality. Are you:

• Running any automated checks?


• Using different tools?


• Still doing everything manually?

Drop a comment—I'd love to learn from your setup.

Bipin works on documentation tooling at EkLine. He's interested in how teams scale documentation quality without scaling review burden.