Help and support plans

Notes for the devcentr.org help surface and the future dedicated support stack. This is planning only — not a shipping commitment.

Information architecture

  • Canonical URL: /help — top-level help hub.

  • Alias: /support redirects to /help#support.

  • Self-help vs support are two kinds of help:

    • Self-help — documentation and other answers the user can use without a human.

    • Support — assisted help (human or AI), tickets, private contact.

Do not make docs the top-level support page. Docs are one choice on /help.

Current state (shipped / available)

  • /help landing with docs (live) and contact-support (coming soon).

  • Interim contact: [email protected].

  • Public triage still via GitHub Issues and Discussions.

  • Community menu (header): Help, Status, Better Stack uptime, Slack, Discussions.

  • Live probe page at /status; hosted incidents/uptime at https://status.devcentr.org (Better Stack).

  • Slack: public invite in src/lib/site-links.ts (SLACK_INVITE_URL).

Near-term product goals

  1. Keep /help as the single entry; do not deep-link a half-built desk.

  2. When a dedicated support system exists, wire the "Contact support" row to it (no fake URL until then).

  3. Prefer GitHub as the public system of record for bugs/features; keep private/security/billing off public Issues.

Planned: AI chatbot / assisted helpdesk

Goal: first-line answers from docs and product knowledge, with escalation to a human.

  • Index docs.devcentr.org (and later in-app help) as the retrieval corpus.

  • Chat entry point from /help (and eventually the desktop app), clearly labeled as assisted/AI.

  • Escalate to a ticket or support@ when confidence is low, the user asks for a human, or the topic is account/security/billing.

  • Guardrails: no inventing product behavior; cite doc sources; refuse secrets and credential handling in chat.

  • Fit with DevCentr local-first culture: prefer shipping diagnostics packages the user reviews before upload, rather than silent telemetry dumps.

Out of scope for v1: replacing GitHub Issues as the public bug tracker.

Planned: full helpdesk SaaS

When volume or paid plans justify an operator queue:

  • Evaluate a conventional helpdesk (e.g. Help Scout, Freshdesk, Zendesk) or an internal queue (e.g. Linear + private inbox) behind the same /help → Support path.

  • Public front door stays /help; SaaS is the back office.

  • Map channels: email (support@), web form/chat escalation, optional in-app "Report problem".

  • SLAs and private tickets for paying customers; OSS community continues on GitHub Discussions/Issues where appropriate.

  • Avoid Discord-as-primary-support (poor searchability and ownership).

Explicit non-goals (for now)

  • Embedding a third-party chat widget before the desk exists.

  • Making documentation URLs masquerade as "Support".

  • Committing a production URL for the dedicated system before it ships.

Related surfaces