GitHub Webhooks and Living Onboarding Documentation
Keep onboarding aligned with main: auto-sync scans on push, stale markers, and how OnBoardAI-style workflows reduce doc drift.
Static documentation celebrates the day it is written and dies quietly the week after. Living documentation ties narrative to the branch your team actually ships — usually main or a protected default.
What webhooks enable
When your Git provider sends push events, a product can:
- Compare latest scanned commit with tip of default branch.
- Mark the repo outdated or queued for refresh when they diverge.
- Enqueue scans selectively — for example only roles that opt into auto-sync when your policy allows it.
That loop keeps onboarding artifacts honest without someone manually diffing thousands of lines each sprint.
Pair automation with human judgment
Webhooks should not spam scans on every typo. Mature setups combine:
- Role-level auto-sync toggles for teams that want continuous refresh.
- Manual runs for owners who prefer batching expensive model calls.
- Freshness badges so readers know whether the text matches HEAD.
Security and operations
Webhook endpoints must verify signatures (for example GitHub’s HMAC secret) and tie events to the correct workspace and repository rows. Secrets should rotate on the same cadence as other production credentials.
OnBoardAI-style workflow
In OnBoardAI, hosted workspaces connect GitHub, store webhook secrets per workspace, and surface freshness plus job status in the repository dashboard — so engineers see when a scan is queued, running, or failed without digging through logs.