Everyone's obsessing over Copilot generating questionable application code or entire functions from a single comment. Meanwhile, I've found its most reliable, almost boringly useful function is writing the documentation we all love to skip. The sheer number of production incidents I've seen that trace back to a README.md that's five years out of date or a config flag that everyone just "knows" is staggering.
Consider the classic scenario: you've just spent three hours refactoring a crusty internal CLI tool written in Go. The last thing you want to do is meticulously update the 80-line help text and the dozen example commands in the README. So you don't. You write a quick comment and let Copilot finish the job.
```go
// updateConfig updates the application configuration by querying the management API.
// It requires a valid API key and the environment flag to be set.
// Usage example:
func updateConfig(apiKey string, env string) error {
```
Hit `Enter` and watch it populate something like:
```go
// updateConfig updates the application configuration by querying the management API.
// It requires a valid API key and the environment flag to be set.
// Usage example: `cli-tool update-config --key $(KEY) --env staging`
// Flags:
// --key, -k Management API key (required)
// --env, -e Target environment (staging|production) (required)
// --dry-run Perform a dry run without applying changes
// Exit codes:
// 0 - Success
// 1 - Invalid arguments
// 2 - API communication failure
// 3 - Write conflict
```
Is it perfect? No. But it's 90% of the way there, structured, and you're infinitely more likely to tweak that generated text than you are to write it from a blank screen. It's the same for YAML configs, Dockerfile comments, or even crafting that initial Jira ticket description after a post-mortem. It excels at turning a few bullet points in your head into coherent, formatted prose.
This isn't about outsourcing thought; it's about automating the clerical work of knowledge transfer. The real value isn't in creating something from nothing—it's in maintaining consistency and completeness in the artifacts that actually keep a platform running when the person who built it is on vacation. The next time your "self-documenting code" causes a Sev-2 because someone misinterpreted a nilable parameter, you might see the appeal.