# I built an x86_64 kernel from scratch, and it made me hate AI documentation tools. So I built my own.

> Source: <https://dev.to/taterlabsllc/i-built-an-x8664-kernel-from-scratch-and-it-made-me-hate-ai-documentation-tools-so-i-built-my-3dp2>
> Published: 2026-05-20 07:54:06+00:00

Six months ago, I started building TaterTOS64, an x86_64 kernel. As any systems dev knows, once you hit the 10,000-line mark across a mix of C, Assembly, and Linker scripts, your brain starts to leak. I needed a way to document the architectural "why"—how the interrupt vectors hand off to the scheduler, how the paging logic relates to the physical memory map.
Naturally, I tried the modern approach: I fed the code to LLMs.
The Result was a Disaster.
Generic "AI Doc" tools failed me in three specific ways:
.c
file but completely hallucinate the #include
chain. They had no idea where the paging.h
constants were actually defined in my repo structure.Building the Solution: TaterBookBuilder
I decided to stop building the kernel for two weeks and build the documentation compiler I actually wanted. I call it TaterBookBuilder.
Instead of a simple "text-to-prompt" wrapper, I built a deterministic analysis engine first.
How it actually works:
#include
(C) and %include
(Assembly) to its canonical repository node. No more guessing where types come from.src/kernel/sched.c:L45-L120
.The Philosophy: Local-First and Perpetual
Documentation is a permanent asset. It shouldn't depend on a cloud subscription.
I'm shipping TaterBookBuilder as a 77MB Linux AppImage. It's completely turnkey—I even bundled a static binary of Pandoc inside it so you don't have to install a single dependency.
And for the pricing? I'm using the JetBrains Model. You buy it once, you own that version forever. You get a year of maintenance, and if you don't want to renew, your documentation pipeline keeps working exactly as it did on day one.
Documentation should be as rock-solid and local as the code it describes.
Check out the workbench and download the trial here:
https://taterlabs.shop/taterbook.html
I'd love to hear from other systems devs—how are you handling the "trust gap" with AI-generated architecture maps?