When to Document and When to Ship

# When to Document and When to Ship

"Document everything" is unrealistic. "Document nothing" is dangerous. The skill is knowing when documentation is worth the investment.

- High stakes: Architecture decisions, security choices, compliance-affecting decisions - Non-obvious: Surprising technical choices, counterintuitive approaches - Foundational: Core architecture, shared conventions - Shared: Team-wide decisions, cross-team interfaces

- Low stakes: Trivial implementation choices, easily reversible decisions - Obvious: Standard patterns, self-documenting code - Experimental: Prototypes, spikes - Solo: Personal projects, one-off scripts

Will someone need to understand this later? Is the understanding non-obvious? Will context be lost? If yes to any: document. If no to all: probably skip.