Keep documentation screenshots up to date

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Screenshots go stale quietly. A button gets renamed, a settings panel moves, a field is added — and the image in your guide still shows last quarter’s interface. Readers follow the picture instead of the prose, and your docs teach them the wrong thing.

This guide sets up screenshot maintenance in two stages. First, run a one-off refresh yourself to confirm the agent captures your product correctly. Then, use a recurring agent to keep the images current without anyone needing to remember to check.

Before you begin

You need:

• An EkLine account with Docs Agent enabled.
• A repository connected to EkLine that holds both your documentation pages and their image files.
• A sandbox for each product URL your screenshots come from. The sandbox gives the agent the address to visit and, for pages behind a login, the sign-in variables it needs.
• Documentation pages that reference their screenshots. The agent finds candidate images by reading how your pages reference them.

Tip

Point the sandbox at a staging environment with representative data rather than production. Recaptured images ship in a pull request to your public docs, so the account you sign in with decides what appears on screen.

Step 1: Confirm the sandbox reaches your product

The agent can only recapture a screen it can open. Verify this before you schedule anything.

1. Go to your EkLine dashboard and navigate to Settings > Organization > Docs Agent.

2. In the Sandbox section, confirm a sandbox appears under Configured sandboxes with the URL your screenshots come from. Note its name — you need the name, not the URL, in Step 3.

3. If no sandbox matches, create one.

Step 2: Run a refresh on demand

Run one refresh yourself before you put it on a schedule. You see what the agent captures, and you find any sign-in or navigation problem while someone is watching.

1. Open the Docs Agent editor and start a new session.

2. Ask the agent to refresh your screenshots against the sandbox by name:

   Check the screenshots in our documentation against the
   staging-admin sandbox. Recapture any that no longer match
   the product, then open a pull request.

3. Watch the Live browser panel as the agent signs in and navigates. Each page it opens appears in real time.

4. Review what the agent reports. It lists the images it recaptured, the screen each one depicts, and any image it deferred with the reason.

5. Click Raise PR to open a pull request with the new images. The button prefills a chat message — send it, and the agent opens the PR.

Step 3: Schedule a recurring refresh

With the sandbox proven, hand the recurring work to a scheduled agent.

1. Click Scheduled Agents in the left navigation, then click New Agent.

2. In the template picker, search for and select Doc Screenshot Refresh.

3. Replace the highlighted <input_needed> placeholder with your sandbox name. To cover more than one product URL, enter one sandbox name per line:

   staging-admin
   staging-marketing

   The form prevents saving until you replace the placeholder.

4. Set the schedule. Monthly suits most teams — screenshots drift more slowly than prose, and each run changes at most five images. Choose weekly if your interface is under active redesign.

5. Leave Raise a pull request enabled so each run delivers its images for review.

6. Optionally enable Send a Slack notification and enter a channel name, such as docs-team, to get a summary of each run.

7. Click Create Agent.

What the agent changes and what it leaves alone

The agent is deliberately conservative. Knowing where the line falls saves you from reviewing a pull request that seems to have missed something.

The agent	Detail
Recaptures product screenshots	Images that show your product’s interface, cropped to the element the image depicts
Creates missing images	When a page’s prose and alt text call for a screenshot that isn’t there
Replaces only structural changes	A renamed label, a moved control, a new field, a reworked layout — a change a reader would act on
Skips dynamic content	Row values, timestamps, chart figures, and the signed-in username differ on every visit, so the agent leaves those images alone rather than churning your docs each run
Skips non-screenshots	Diagrams, logos, illustrations, and mockups stay untouched
Caps each run	At most five images per run, missing images first. It reports anything it defers
Changes images, not prose	For documentation that describes the interface incorrectly in text, use the Doc UI Accuracy Review template instead

Verify the setup

Confirm both stages are in place:

• A sandbox for each product URL appears under Configured sandboxes in Settings > Organization > Docs Agent.
• A Doc Screenshot Refresh agent appears in Scheduled Agents with status Enabled and no <input_needed> placeholder left in its prompt.

To see the output before the first scheduled run, click the play icon on the agent row to run it immediately. Then click the chevron to expand its run history and click the run timestamp to open the full session.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
The run reports that it couldn’t sign in	The sandbox variables are wrong, or the sign-in form needs a value the sandbox doesn’t have. See The agent can’t sign in.
The agent browsed the site but stayed signed out	The page host doesn’t match the sandbox URL. A sandbox for staging.example.com doesn’t apply to app.example.com.
The run finished without a pull request	Nothing needed replacing. When every candidate image differs only in dynamic content, the agent discards the captures rather than opening an empty pull request.
A screenshot you expected wasn’t updated	Check the run’s deferred list. Common reasons: the agent couldn’t tell which screen the image shows, the image isn’t a product screenshot, or the run hit its five-image cap.
The run reports no target	The sandbox name in the prompt doesn’t match a configured sandbox. Names are fixed at creation — confirm the exact spelling under Configured sandboxes.
Recaptured images show test data you don’t want published	Point the sandbox at an account with presentable data, then re-run. Review each image in the pull request before merging.

Next steps

• Browse authenticated pages with a sandbox — Configure the sign-in variables the agent uses to reach pages behind a login.
• Scheduled agents — Explore the full template library for recurring documentation tasks.
• Capture screenshots from a video — Turn a moment in a recording into a documentation image.
• Prevent documentation drift — Catch undocumented code changes alongside stale images.