How to build your help center from your codebase with ChatGPT or Claude

In TeleportHQ, your own AI tool can write your product's help center for you: copy the prompt below into an AI that can read your code or your product notes, such as Claude Code, Cursor or ChatGPT. It asks for your product's name and your readers, writes one Markdown file per question in numbered folders that become your categories, and zips the folder. Drop that ZIP on the Import Articles button in the Help Center panel, review what will be created, and your help center is live at /help. When your product changes, ask the AI to update the files and import the ZIP again: the articles are updated in place.

Before you start#

• Your project needs the Help Center switched on. See How to add a help center to your site.
• You need an AI tool that can read your codebase or your product notes: for example Claude Code or Cursor opened in your repository, or ChatGPT with your product notes pasted in. The more of your product it can see, the truer the articles.
• The ZIP must hold one folder per category, with one .md file per article and the pictures next to them; a number at the start of each folder and file name sets its order. The full format is in How to import Markdown files into your blog or help center, and the prompt below tells the AI all of it.

Steps#

1. Copy the prompt#

Copy the whole block below. It tells the AI who it is writing for, how to name the folders and files, what to put in each article, what to leave out, and to end by zipping the folder.

You are writing my product's help center as Markdown files. First ask me, and wait for the answers: the product's name, and who the readers are (for example "non-technical shop owners").

Then read the codebase or my product notes and write one article per question a reader would ask: how to do something, what a feature is, or why something fails. Describe only what the product does today, with button, menu and field labels exactly as shown, bold.

Deliver this folder, zipped as help-center.zip:

help-center/
  01-getting-started/
    01-create-your-account.md
    02-invite-your-team.md
  02-billing/
    _category.md
    01-change-your-plan.md

Rules:
- One folder per topic (folders may nest), one .md file per article.
- Start every folder and file name with a two-digit number and a dash. It sets the order and is removed from titles and web addresses: 02-create-your-account.md becomes "Create your account" at /help/create-your-account. Lowercase letters, digits and dashes only.
- File names must be unique across all folders: each is its article's web address.
- Each article starts with front matter between two --- lines: title (the reader's question, such as "How to change your plan"), description (one sentence that answers it), and optionally order (overrides the file-name number), tags (a few words), related (2 to 4 file paths, such as [../02-billing/01-change-your-plan.md]) and redirect_from (its old web addresses). No related-articles section in the body.
- Add a _category.md (name, description, order) only when the folder's name is not a good category name.
- Body: a one-paragraph answer, then "## Before you start" if needed, "## Steps" (numbered, one action each), "## Check that it worked" and "## Troubleshooting" with the product's exact messages. Short sentences, plain words, no marketing; define technical words on first use.
- Link to another article with a Markdown link whose address is its file's path, relative to the current file: ../01-getting-started/02-invite-your-team.md.
- Pictures go in a pictures folder next to the articles, by relative path: ![The Billing page](pictures/change-your-plan-1.png); without pictures, the steps must stand alone.
- Leave out code, file paths, internal names, unreleased features and anything you cannot confirm.
- Finish by zipping the help-center folder.

2. Give it to your AI and answer its questions#

1. Open your AI tool where it can read your product: Claude Code or Cursor in your repository, or a ChatGPT conversation with your product notes.
2. Paste the prompt and send it.
3. Answer its two questions: your product's name, for example Brightly, and who your readers are, for example non-technical shop owners.
4. Let it work. It writes the files, then zips the help-center folder into help-center.zip. If your tool can't make a ZIP, zip the help-center folder yourself with your computer's compress command.

3. Check the ZIP#

Open the help-center folder before you import it and check:

• Every folder is a category and starts with a number and a dash, for example 01-getting-started. Folders can hold folders, for example 02-billing/invoices.
• Every article is one .md file with a numbered name, for example 02-create-your-account.md, and starts with a title and a description between two --- lines.
• Every file name is different from every other, in every folder. The file name is the article's address, so two files named 01-overview.md in different folders would clash, and only the first would be imported.
• Pictures sit next to the articles, at the path the articles point to, for example pictures/create-your-account-1.png.
• No article is named README.md or index.md, and no folder's name starts with _ or .: TeleportHQ leaves those out.

4. Import it#

1. Open your project in the TeleportHQ editor.
2. In the left sidebar, click Help Center.

3. At the top right of the Help Center panel, click the upload arrow (tooltip Import Articles). While the list is empty, the panel also offers Import articles below Create Article.

   

4. Drop help-center.zip on the box, or click the box to choose it. "Reading the file…" shows while TeleportHQ reads it.
5. Read the plan. Nothing is written yet. It counts what the import will do, for example "12 articles", "4 categories from the folders" and "18 pictures to upload to your files". A box headed with a number of problems (for example "1 problem") lists files that won't be imported, and a box of notes (for example "3 notes") lists, file by file, what will be left out or changed. The messages are explained under Troubleshooting.
6. Leave Publish imported articles on to put the articles live, or turn it off to save them as drafts.
7. Click Import followed by the number, for example Import 12 articles. The bar shows Creating categories, Uploading pictures, then Writing articles, and a message sums it up, for example "Import finished: 12 articles added, 4 categories created, 18 pictures in your files". If some files couldn't be imported, the panel stays open with the same summary and lists what went wrong; click Done to close it.

5. Read it on your site and fix what reads wrong#

1. Publish your site if it isn't published yet. See How to publish a web app. After that, new and edited articles show on your live site within seconds, without publishing again.
2. Open /help on your site and read the articles the way a customer would.
3. For a wrong title, step or label, fix the .md file, or ask your AI to, then zip the folder and import it again. Articles are matched by their address: a changed file updates its article in place, a new file is added, and the rest stay as they are. See Import again to update.
4. You can also fix an article in the editor: open it in the Help Center panel and edit it. The next import of its file replaces the title, text and excerpt again, so put the fix in the file too.

Check that it worked#

• The categories show as pills at the top of the Help Center panel, nested like your folders and in the order of their numbers.
• Inside each category, the articles follow the numbers in their file names.
• On your live site, /help lists your categories, and each article opens at /help/ followed by its file name without the number, for example /help/create-your-account.

Troubleshooting#

"No Markdown articles found" The ZIP holds no .md files outside left-out folders (those whose names start with _ or .). Open the ZIP and check that the articles are there and that their folders are named without a leading _ or ..

"… shares the address "…" with …; only the first is imported" Two files have the same name, in different folders. The file name is the article's address. Rename one of them, or give it its own slug in its front matter, and import again.

A note says a picture "is not in the bundle, dropped" The article points to a picture that isn't in the ZIP at that path. Add the picture next to the article, or remove the line, and import again.

The plan says pictures are .avif (or .heic, .heif, .bmp, .tif, .tiff) "which TeleportHQ cannot upload" TeleportHQ doesn't upload pictures in those formats, so the import leaves them out of the articles. Convert them to .png, .jpg or .webp, change the picture paths in the articles to the new file names, zip the folder again and import it.

A note says a related article "was not found, left out" A path under related matches no file in the ZIP and no article already in your help center. Fix the path (it is relative to the file that holds it) and import again.

The plan counts links "to nothing in the ZIP, kept as written" A link's path matches no .md file in the ZIP. The link is kept as the AI wrote it, and after the import the editor's Issues window lists it as broken. Fix the path and import again. See How to find and fix broken links on your site.

Good to know#

• Keep the folder in your repository. Put help-center/ next to your code and commit it. When the product changes, ask the same AI to update the help center for the changes, zip the folder and import it again: changed files update their articles, new files are added, and articles that aren't in the ZIP are never deleted.
• What a re-import replaces. An article's title, text, excerpt, main picture, categories, tags, SEO title and description come from the file again, so a change you made to those in TeleportHQ is replaced. Its place in its category, related articles, status and dates change only when the file sets them. Its address never changes.
• _category.md only when a folder's name isn't enough. A folder named 01-getting-started is the category Getting started: the number is removed, dashes become spaces and the first letter is capitalised. To give a category another name, a description or an icon, the AI adds a _category.md file in the folder with name, description, order and icon. An order there wins over the number in the folder's name, as an order in an article's front matter wins over the number in its file name.
• Old addresses. If you are moving a help center from somewhere else, have the AI list each article's old addresses under redirect_from. Each becomes a permanent redirect to the new page, which you find in Project settings (cog, bottom left) → SEO & social → Search engines → Custom Redirects. See Old addresses become permanent redirects.
• The Blog imports the same way. The same ZIP works in the Blog panel, where addresses start with /blog/ instead of /help/.