# From decentralized Docs-as-Code to a centralized repository: Evolving Grab's documentation strategy

[Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab) · Karen Kue · May 29, 2026

## Summary

Grab originally adopted a decentralized Docs-as-Code workflow to manage Markdown documentation alongside service code, but the model strained as engineering scaled. Dispersed repositories led to fragmented terminology, uncoordinated repository moves, uneven linting standards, and noisy search results. To resolve these issues, the organization transitioned to a centralized documentation repository with standardized templates, automated CI quality gates, and a unified search overlay combining fuzzy title search with Glean. Consolidating Markdown into a single repository also established a clean, structured knowledge base tailored for internal AI agents. The centralized setup fostered continuous maintenance, averaging 27 daily commits and an update merged roughly every 50 minutes.

## Takeaways

- Decentralized Docs-as-Code across separate service repositories causes diverging terminology, untracked source moves, and inconsistent CI linting that degrades search reliability.
- Centralizing Markdown documentation creates a structured, uniform corpus that improves knowledge retrieval for both internal developers and AI agents.
- Activity metrics following Grab's repository centralization showed approximately 27 commits per day, an update merged every 50 minutes, and 63% of contributions consisting of small to medium improvements.

**Tags:** [Architecture](https://yomu.fyi/topic/architecture), [CI/CD](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ci-cd), [Developer Experience](https://yomu.fyi/topic/developer-experience), [Search](https://yomu.fyi/topic/search)

[Read original post](https://engineering.grab.com/evolving-documentation-strategy)