Anton Kronseder, co-owner of smartics, traces his nearly 40-year software development journey, highlighting how his company created the projectdoc Toolbox to streamline documentation on Atlassian’s Confluence platform and how AI is shaping their future.
- smartics launched projectdoc Toolbox to simplify documentation
- Confluence chosen for accessibility and Jira integration
- AI being incorporated to improve knowledge discovery
What happened
Anton Kronseder, co-founder of smartics, shared the origins and evolution of their company’s documentation tools during the launch of Atlassian’s Code Campfire Series. Beginning his programming career on the Commodore 64, Anton’s experience spans nearly four decades, culminating in founding smartics with a focus on improving developer documentation workflows. In 2002, recognizing inefficiencies such as long fix times for small errors and the need for centralized, accessible documentation, Anton and his partner built a documentation site using Maven and open-source tools to better connect documentation with code.
They selected Atlassian’s Confluence for its accessibility, lack of complex markup syntax, and its robust Jira integration, which aligned with their goal of creating tools usable by non-technical team members. This led to the development of the projectdoc Toolbox, a Confluence app empowering users without coding experience to architect and maintain documentation. The toolbox also includes a REST API for custom extensions, reflecting smartics’ commitment to flexibility and user-driven innovation.
Why it matters
smartics’ approach addresses a common challenge in software teams: maintaining accurate, accessible documentation without requiring deep technical skills. By enabling a broader range of users to directly shape documentation through low-code/no-code tools, projectdoc Toolbox enhances collaboration and efficiency in knowledge management. This shift supports more agile development environments where customer feedback can quickly translate into actionable documentation updates.
Moreover, smartics’ strategy of building on Confluence and Jira makes their solution accessible within widely adopted platforms, increasing its practical utility for many teams. Their work exemplifies the potential of ecosystem-based app development to extend platform capabilities and improve user experience across organizational roles, from developers to solution architects.
What to watch next
smartics is actively exploring integration of artificial intelligence to further revolutionize documentation on Confluence. Anton highlighted possibilities such as leveraging machine learning to surface specific information efficiently, enhancing search and retrieval within large knowledge bases. This development signals a broader trend of embedding AI into collaborative tools to drive smarter, context-aware workflows.
Looking forward, smartics continues to evolve their offerings to make documentation building not only more functional but also more engaging for users. Anton’s advice for new Atlassian Marketplace developers is to leverage the ecosystem and community to create innovative solutions that push beyond traditional software boundaries. Observers should watch how smartics and similar companies harness emerging technologies to empower users and improve software development processes.