MadCap Flare to Docs-as-Code: What Better Collaboration Looks Like

An enterprise software company with a large technical documentation operation was evaluating alternatives to MadCap Flare when its documentation lead raised a non-negotiable requirement: Git could not disappear from their workflow.

Their localization process already depended on it. The documentation team pushed HTML content to Git; the localization team pulled it, translated it, and pushed it back; then the documentation team retrieved it again for publishing. Because localization sat in a separate department, the workflow was important enough that a platform migration could not break it.

That gets at the real question behind docs-as-code. MadCap Flare already supports Git source control, so the decision is not simply whether documentation should “use Git.” It is about what role Git plays, who can contribute through it, and how changes stay synchronized when writers and engineers work on the same content.

What is docs-as-code?#

Docs-as-code is often reduced to Markdown, terminals, and technical writers learning Git. That is one implementation, but the broader idea is that documentation follows many of the same versioning, review, and release practices as software development.

The important question, therefore, is not where someone types a sentence. It is what happens after they change it: how that change is versioned, reviewed, approved, merged, and eventually published.

Another software team already relied on GitHub source control for its documentation. During an Archbee evaluation, the team explained that source control was already a major part of its documentation operation.

The useful middle ground is not necessarily “CMS or Git.” It is whether writers can keep a comfortable authoring environment while documentation still moves through the versioning and review controls that engineering expects.

MadCap Flare already supports Git. So what actually changes?#

Flare has genuine Git source-control functionality and can connect projects to Git repositories. The more useful difference is not whether Git is available, but how contributors work around it.

Both tools can work with Git, but they organize contributions differently.

In Flare, authoring remains centered on the Flare project, with Git providing source control around it. Archbee’s two-way workflow lets writers contribute through the documentation editor while developers can continue working through GitHub.

In Archbee’s two-way GitHub workflow, changes can originate in either Archbee or GitHub. Writers can edit in Archbee and send changes to GitHub through a pull request, while repository-originated changes can sync back into Archbee. GitHub handles version control and repository review for the connected content.

A two-way Git workflow lets technical writers and developers work in different tools while changes stay synchronized through GitHub version control

That means a technical writer can work in a documentation editor while a developer continues working through GitHub or an IDE, without either side maintaining a separate version of the documentation.

What two-way Git sync actually looks like in practice#

Imagine a technical writer needs to update an installation guide. They make the change in Archbee and push the draft to GitHub as a pull request. A reviewer checks it in GitHub and decides whether to merge it. Once merged, the documentation in Archbee updates from the repository.

Now reverse the direction. If an engineer changes the connected documentation directly in GitHub, that repository change is also reflected back in Archbee. That is the practical value of two-way sync: the writer and engineer can contribute through different interfaces without maintaining two separate sources.

The same team saw the appeal because GitHub was already part of its documentation operation. During the evaluation, Archbee discussed keeping content in the repository while developers continued contributing through VS Code or GitHub and writers worked through the documentation CMS.

Archbee also supports Branches & Reviews, including for GitHub-connected spaces, so teams can work on documentation changes in parallel and merge them when ready. Its Draft & Reviews mode allows one draft per document rather than multiple simultaneous drafts on the same document, and it does not support real-time co-editing by multiple users on the same document or branch.

Git support and two-way contribution answer different questions#

“Git support” alone tells you very little about the contribution workflow.

A documentation team needs to know whether changes move in both directions, whether browser-editor changes enter the repository through pull requests, who controls merging, and which branch controls the version being reviewed or published.

That is why evaluating a MadCap Flare alternative should go beyond asking, “Does this platform integrate with GitHub?” Ask what happens when someone changes documentation in GitHub and whether non-technical authors can contribute to Git-versioned documentation without having to work through Git themselves.

How Git-connected workflows affect technical writers and engineers#

For technical writers, docs-as-code can improve traceability and engineering review, but the tooling can also add to the workload.

Technical writers and developers can use different tools while contributing to the same connected documentation workflow

One technical writer who moved from Flare to VS Code and GitHub said on Reddit that they were spending more time figuring out GitHub than writing.

Another commenter in the same discussion described that setup as the most technically intensive authoring environment they had used, while also noting that developers liked reviewing documentation there because GitHub was already familiar to them.

That trade-off matters because not every contributor to documentation is an engineer. Product managers, support teams, SMEs, and writers may all need to contribute without learning branching and pull-request workflows in depth. A hybrid workflow, such as Archbee’s two-way GitHub setup, lets non-technical contributors work in the documentation editor while GitHub handles version control and engineering review.

Engineers have a different problem. They may own the technical facts, but that does not automatically make them strong documentation authors. Developers on Reddit discuss the difficulty of knowing how much context to include and balancing accuracy, clarity, and completeness when writing documentation.

A Git-connected workflow, therefore, does not need to turn writers into developers or engineers into technical writers. Its value is that both can contribute using the tools they are already comfortable with while changes remain synchronized across the connected workflow.

Git can matter beyond engineering#

For one enterprise software team, Git was not primarily about developers editing documentation. Its localization workflow already depended on it.

A repository can therefore sit between technical writing and other workflows such as localization, release management, APIs, or automation. A migration can break one of those dependencies even if the new authoring experience itself looks better.

Before changing platforms, the more useful question is: Who or what already depends on the repository? In this case, an entire localization department did.

That dependency mapping also matters when planning a MadCap Flare migration, because Git is only one part of what needs to survive the move. Existing snippets, variables, conditions, links, and publishing structures may also need to be validated or rebuilt.

Git can sit between documentation and localization teams, allowing translated content to move through the same repository before it is reviewed and published

The same synchronization problem applies to API documentation#

API documentation makes the risk of drift easier to see.

Engineering may already maintain an OpenAPI or Swagger specification in GitHub. If the specification changes while the published API reference is maintained separately, somebody has to reproduce those changes manually, creating another opportunity for the two to drift.

Archbee can import OpenAPI 2.x, 3.0.x, and 3.1.x specifications and render them as API reference documentation. The imported reference can stay synchronized with the source specification, reducing the need to manually reproduce API changes in the docs.

That creates a clearer division of responsibility: engineering can continue owning the specification while writers create the tutorials, examples, and conceptual explanations around the reference.

One API documentation team described the same requirement: it wanted the reference to stay synchronized with Swagger while writers could still add more context and detail around it.

Both products support Swagger/OpenAPI, but they handle the specification differently. Flare embeds OpenAPI or Swagger specifications and renders them through Swagger UI, while Archbee imports the specification and renders it as API reference documentation that can be kept synchronized with the technical source.

From API reference to a full Developer Hub#

One software company wanted a dedicated Developer Hub, separate from its main knowledge base, and wanted to make API references easier for developers to access. The team evaluated how to provide that developer-facing experience without turning documentation into a large engineering project.

The resulting Developer Hub gave writers a place to build the explanatory layer around developer documentation while the API reference remained tied to its technical source. The example shows how developer documentation can become a dedicated product surface rather than a secondary set of reference pages.

The useful lesson here is not simply that API specifications can be imported. Keeping technical reference content close to its source gives writers more room to focus on what the specification does not provide: examples, explanations, and developer experience.

What to check before moving from MadCap Flare to a docs-as-code workflow#

Before evaluating a platform, map four things: the version-control model, contribution workflow, dependent systems, and publishing workflow.

Know where version control and review happen, how writers and engineers will contribute, who owns merging, and what localization or API processes already depend on Git. For teams moving away from Flare, the inventory should also cover the existing content structures and publishing requirements that have to survive the migration.

For a deeper assessment, use the Docs-as-Code Migration Readiness Template to map repository ownership, contribution paths, dependent systems, publishing rules, and migration risks before choosing a workflow.

Git integration is really workflow integration#

The enterprise software team did not need Git for its own sake. It needed Git because another department already depended on a workflow built around it.

That is the distinction worth carrying into a MadCap-to-docs-as-code evaluation. A Git integration alone does not tell you who can contribute, where changes are reviewed, how changes synchronize, or whether existing workflows can continue unchanged.

Don’t ask only whether a documentation platform supports Git. Ask who can change the documentation, from where, what happens next, and how those changes move through review and publishing. For teams that want Git-based version control without forcing every contributor into Git, that contribution model can matter more than the integration checkbox itself.