Best 7 Small AI Tools for Developers Handling Documentation and Comments 

For developers juggling multiple projects, maintaining comprehensive documentation and writing meaningful code comments often take a backseat to deadlines and feature implementations. Yet, good documentation and thorough inline comments are critical for team collaboration, code maintenance, and onboarding new team members. Thanks to the rise of purpose-built AI tools, the once tedious tasks of documenting code and generating intelligent comments can now be significantly streamlined.

TL;DR: If you’re a developer looking to speed up your documentation process and improve the quality of your code comments, AI tools offer efficient and smart solutions. From plugins that integrate with your IDE to standalone web platforms, these tools can generate docstrings, suggest meaningful function names, and even explain code logic in natural language. We’ve rounded up the seven best lightweight and reliable AI tools to help you stay focused on code — not just documenting it. Save time and prevent burnout by letting AI help keep your codebase understandable and maintainable.

1. CodeWhisperer by Amazon

Platform: VS Code, JetBrains, CLI Tools
Best for: Inline code suggestions, real-time documentation prompts

Amazon’s CodeWhisperer has garnered praise for its accuracy and seamless IDE integration. While it’s commonly recognized for auto-completing code, many users overlook its hidden strength: helping write inline comments and suggesting function-level documentation. It’s particularly useful when working with unfamiliar APIs or writing utility functions where comments enhance long-term readability.

• Trained on a broad corpus of open-source projects
• Provides real-time suggestions for comments and docstrings
• Integrates with popular code editors

This tool is best suited for developers in enterprise environments looking to align with high code quality standards without slowing down productivity.

2. CodiumAI

Platform: VS Code, Web App
Best for: Test generation, docstring inference

CodiumAI is primarily known for generating tests, but its growing capability to provide context-aware documentation makes it stand out. When you paste or write a new function, CodiumAI attempts to infer the function’s purpose and generate clean, understandable docstrings compliant with Python standards such as NumPy or Google style.

It also gives you insight into the function parameters and return types, based on both naming conventions and logical predictions. Ideal for teams using Python and JavaScript where dynamic typing requires more contextual clarification.

3. Mintlify Doc Writer

Platform: Chrome Extension, Web Interface
Best for: API documentation, explaining functions

Mintlify Doc Writer is aimed particularly at startups and open-source contributors who publish APIs or SDKs. The tool connects to your GitHub repo and uses AI to generate detailed and consistent API documentation following best practices.

Generate function-level documentation or elaborate on class methods with contextual understanding. Mintlify shines in post-production code, where documentation is often short-shrifted but essential for third-party users.

• Supports multiple documentation styles
• Optimized for internal and public API documentation
• Focuses on clarity and reducing ambiguity

If you’re contributing to developer-facing products or writing shared SDKs, Mintlify will help you avoid manual and error-prone doc creation.

4. Tabnine

Platform: All popular IDEs
Best for: Comment suggestions, code clarification

Tabnine, a long-standing tool in the AI pair-programming space, now includes a richer understanding of human language structure. Unlike some competitors, Tabnine focuses on maintaining privacy by offering on-premise models, which is key for teams with sensitive data.

It actively suggests code comments and summaries based on your function’s intent and design patterns. Tabnine can even learn your style over time and replicate the tone and structure you prefer for documentation lines.

5. ExplainDev

Platform: Browser Plugin, Web App
Best for: Explaining unknown code snippets

This tool is unique in its ability to “explain” code written by someone else — be it StackOverflow snippets, legacy codebases, or a new pull request from a teammate. ExplainDev integrates with GitHub and browser windows so you can simply highlight code and receive a thorough, natural-language explanation.

It’s fundamentally helpful for AI-based documentation because it enables developers to understand and then write suitable documentation and comments, not merely copy-generate them. This leads to more meaningful explanations and comments.

• Ideal for onboarding new engineers to unfamiliar codebases
• Supports natural language Q&A about code behavior
• Can be used on any code visible in your browser

6. Swimm

Platform: Web-based with IDE plugins
Best for: Continuous documentation syncing with code

Swimm markets itself not just as a documentation generator, but as a live integration layer between documentation and code. It ensures that the docs “swim” alongside the code — updating automatically when code changes in designated areas. This feature is made particularly powerful with AI assistance, which suggests updated descriptions and tracks down affected dependencies.

Swimm’s guided documentation templates, enriched by AI suggestions, are suitable for mid to large teams, especially where multiple developers touch the same modules regularly.

Features include:

• Live syncing between code and markdown documentation
• Template-driven document generation
• Git-based version control support

7. Ghostwriter by Replit

Platform: Replit Environment
Best for: Solo developers, learners and fast prototyping

While Replit’s Ghostwriter initially aimed at helping beginners debug and write better code, it has matured into a very effective tool for automated commenting. It functions inside Replit’s browser IDE, offering quick documentation on functions, summarizing changes, and even crafting commit messages.

If you work on solo projects or one-off scripts and still want presentable documentation, Ghostwriter’s lightweight nature and accessible interface offer a solid starting point that’s easy to discard or refine as needed.

Conclusion

Documentation and comments are often the difference between sustainable, high-quality code and chaos, especially on collaborative or long-lived projects. These seven AI tools aren’t just time-savers; they actively raise the bar for consistency, clarity, and best practices. Whether you’re a solo developer or part of a growing team, integrating one or more of these lightweight AI tools can help make documentation an integral — and enjoyable — part of your workflow.

Investing in the right AI assistance today can save you hours of technical debt and miscommunication tomorrow. Evaluate your needs, experiment with these tools, and choose the ones that align best with your language and team scale.