Demand gaps — the readers who never arrived

Every other audit reasons about readers who came: what they searched, where they gave up, which page they bounced from. None of them can see the reader who never arrived, because nothing on the site matched what they would have typed. A use case with no page has no impressions, no rank, no dead ends and no rage signals — it is invisible in every number the rest of an audit trusts, and its absence looks exactly like success.

So this audit runs the other way round. It starts from what the product can do, derives who could want that and why, and then asks the docs to account for each one. Its output is not "this page is broken"; it is "this audience, this job and this workflow have no page at all" — handed to whoever decides which pages exist (page set), never written here.

The chain is fixed, and skipping a link is how audits produce feature lists instead of demand:

Capability → Job → User → Workflow → Outcome → Market → Content

When is this audit worth running?#

• The docs are new, or the workspace has no history. The measured readings have nothing to rank; this is the only honest input.
• Everything measurable was already fixed and the numbers are still small. Rewriting the same twelve pages harder does not create demand that no page addresses.
• The product shipped capabilities the docs never framed as jobs. Common after an API, an export, a webhook or an integration lands with one reference page and nothing else.
• Not as a substitute for a measured finding. A page failing on real traffic outranks the best-scored opportunity here, every time. When both are available, choosing a lens decides the order.

Evidence tiers — the one thing that keeps this honest#

This audit produces inference, and inference is how audits start inventing products. Label every line with the tier it actually holds, and never present a lower tier as a higher one:

The whole audit is hypothesis evidence in the labelling described under business translation. Say so once, up front. A capability the source did not show does not exist — not in a use case, not in a search cluster, and above all not in a page this audit asks someone to write.

1. Capability map — actions, not feature names#

Extract what the product does, then translate every feature name into the action it performs. A feature list is not a capability map, and it cannot be turned into a job:

Record per capability: action · inputs · outputs · limits · how often it is used · what it depends on · what it connects to · technical level required. Limits and dependencies are not decoration — a capability gated behind a plan the target audience will not buy is not an opportunity, and half the scoring later turns on that line.

2. Jobs — what the capability lets someone finish#

For each capability, write jobs in one shape:

User has [problem] → uses [capability] → gets [outcome].

Sweep all ten classes per capability rather than stopping at the obvious one. The obvious job is usually the one the docs already cover, which makes it the least valuable output here:

Find (people, companies, records, documents, events, signals) · Analyse (compare, classify, score, diagnose) · Monitor (watch for change, alert, detect, recur) · Extract (collect, export, enrich, transform, normalise) · Automate (remove a repeating manual step) · Discover (new objects, trends, opportunities) · Verify (validate, audit, catch anomalies) · Predict (signals, intent, likely change) · Build (a tool, dashboard, agent, pipeline or dataset on top) · Operate (run it as infrastructure inside an existing process).

A class with no plausible job is a legitimate answer. Write "none" and move on; padding all ten is how a coverage matrix fills with fiction.

The sweep is the method; reading a job properly — the forces on the person, the language they use for it — is jobs to be done.

3. Hidden use cases — what combinations unlock#

The jobs the docs already name are rarely where the growth is. Combine:

Capability A + Capability B + audience C = candidate use case

API + filtering + export, for one product, is lead generation, research, enrichment, dataset construction, monitoring and internal analytics — six use cases, six audiences, six sets of search phrasings, and typically one reference page serving all of them badly.

Per candidate record: the capabilities it rests on, how obvious it is from the docs today (obvious / implied / invisible), who it serves, and the outcome. Invisible ones with real capability support are the point of the whole audit.

4. Audience map — four axes, not a job title#

Cut the same product four ways; the same person appears on all four, and the axis that changes the docs most is usually the technical one:

• Role — developer, engineer, founder, marketer, sales, recruiter, analyst, researcher, product manager, operations, agency, consultant, creator, data scientist, AI engineer, platform team.
• Technical level — non-technical, technical non-developer, developer, data/ML specialist, whole engineering team.
• Organisation — individual, startup, SMB, agency, enterprise, research body, media.
• Context — internal tool, customer-facing product, research, automation, analytics, infrastructure, experimentation.

Per audience: the job they want done, why this product rather than nothing, which capabilities they actually need, the result they walk away with. An audience the source addresses nowhere and no capability serves is speculative — record it as an open question, not as an audience. Writing for the one you keep is know the reader.

5. Business outcomes — what the product does versus why anyone pays#

Translate every capability into a result someone would defend in a budget conversation: time saved · cost removed · manual work removed · revenue · conversion · leads · retention · risk reduced · research accelerated · better decisions · automation · wider coverage · faster detection of change · data that did not exist before · a new product made possible · better customer experience.

The gap between the two columns is the finding. Docs that only ever answer what it does leave the buyer to derive why it is worth paying for, and most of them do not bother.

6. Workflows — the whole run, not a single call#

A capability is a step; people buy the finished sequence.

Trigger → Action → Processing → Output → Business result

New event → collect the data → enrich it → classify it → push it to the CRM → sales acts on it. Mark which workflows the docs already describe end-to-end, and which are assemblable from documented capabilities but written nowhere. The second list is usually the highest-value content in the entire audit: every step exists, and no page says they compose.

7. Integrations and ecosystem#

Name the systems this product can sit inside: CRM · databases · spreadsheets · BI · chat · email · webhooks · automation platforms · warehouses · cloud infrastructure · AI systems · agents · retrieval pipelines · internal tools · customer-facing apps.

Never write a potential integration as an existing one. An unbuilt integration is recorded as potential integration / ecosystem opportunity, and a page for it may only describe what is actually possible today with the documented capabilities.

8. AI and automation surface#

Ask one question of the whole product: can it act as a data source, a tool, an action, or an infrastructure layer for an AI system? Then check each of: agents · retrieval · model context · tool calling · structured output for machine consumers · autonomous workflows · research · enrichment · classification · extraction · summarisation · monitoring agents · assistant-driven search.

Products with an API and structured output almost always have this surface and almost never document it. It is also the one gap where the missing asset is often not prose — a machine-readable descriptor, a tool definition, a worked agent example. (Agent-ready docs is the surface itself.) One caution when the proposed asset is a catalogue of capabilities: a long list of named tools is not a set a calling model picks from. Measured on Docsbook's own MCP call ledger on 2026-09-12, 1 of 136 action tools had ever been called, and every call from outside the founding team landed on one of five names — so the asset that closes this gap is usually a worked route into the few capabilities that matter, not an exhaustive index of all of them.

9. Intent — the same use case at six depths#

One use case needs different pages at different depths. Tag each: problem-aware (they have the pain, not the vocabulary) · solution-aware (they know the category) · product-aware (they are looking at products) · technical (API, SDK, implementation) · commercial (price, limits, comparison) · learning (how to do it at all).

Most docs sites cover technical intent thoroughly and everything above it not at all, then wonder why nobody arrives before the evaluation stage. Matching a page to the depth it serves is search intent.

10. Search clusters — how the job gets typed#

Per use case, write the phrasings a reader would actually use. Not the product name — someone who knows the product name is already found. Group into: category · problem · job · tool · alternative · integration · tutorial · comparison · API/developer · industry · persona.

These are candidate phrasings, not volumes. Never attach a number to one. If real search data exists in the same run, cross-check the clusters against it: a cluster the product already ranks for is a page to sharpen, not a page to write, and it demotes straight into the ordinary striking-distance work described in external checks.

11. Coverage matrix#

One row per dimension, one mark per row, and a page reference for anything marked covered. Unreferenced "covered" is the failure mode this table exists to prevent:

12. Gaps — a named asset, never "more content"#

"Needs more content" is not a finding anyone can act on. Every gap names one asset type and the reader question it closes: tutorial · use-case page · integration guide · industry page · persona page · API example · workflow guide · comparison page · migration guide · case study · benchmark · template · dataset · interactive tool · FAQ entry · troubleshooting article.

Missing: integration guide, "how do I get this into our warehouse nightly?" — rests on the export and scheduling capabilities; no page composes them.

13. Adjacent markets#

Check whether the same capabilities serve a category the product never addressed: sales · marketing · recruiting · research · finance · security · operations · support · product · analytics · data · AI · media · education · agencies · consulting.

Write every one as potential market based on available capabilities, speculative tier, with the capabilities named. A market claim that outruns the product ends up on a landing page, and then in a sales call. Deciding which of them is worth serving — and what it costs in translation and maintenance — is market expansion.

14. Priority#

Score each use case 1–5 on four axes and multiply:

Opportunity Score = Demand × Product fit × Commercial value × Content opportunity

• Demand — how likely it is that people are already looking for this.
• Product fit — how well today's capabilities actually finish the job.
• Commercial value — how much the outcome is worth to whoever gets it.
• Content opportunity — how much a page would unlock that nothing currently does.

The multiplication is the point: any single 1 collapses the score, which is correct. High demand on a job the product half-does produces a page that draws readers and disappoints them, and that is worse than no page. Two guards on the arithmetic:

• Product fit is scored from the capability map, never from ambition. It is the axis that keeps this audit from commissioning documentation for features that do not exist.
• A score is a sort order, not a forecast. It ranks hypotheses against each other. It never outranks a page that is measurably failing on real traffic, and it never gets reported as if it were measured.

Cut to what a week holds, like every other queue: five items is a plan, twenty is a backlog dump. Everything below the cut is one line with a count.

15. What the report contains#

Report in this order, worst gap first, hypothesis labelled throughout:

A. Capability map · B. Use cases the docs already make explicit · C. Hidden use cases · D. Audience map · E. Jobs to be done · F. Business outcomes · G. Workflow opportunities · H. AI and automation opportunities · I. Content gaps · J. Search and discovery opportunities · K. Priority queue — 10–20 opportunities, each with audience, problem, solution, outcome, the capabilities it rests on, the named content asset, and its score.

Then hand the queue over. This audit writes nothing.

Traps#

• Never invent a capability. Every job, workflow, market and proposed page traces to something read in the source. This is the single rule the whole audit stands on.
• Never present a potential integration, market or audience as an existing one, in the report or in any page it produces.
• Never attach a number to a search cluster. These are phrasings, not volumes, and a fabricated volume is how a whole quarter gets spent on the wrong cluster.
• Never let an opportunity score outrank a measured failure. Real traffic beats reasoning about traffic.
• Never write the pages here. Gaps go to whoever owns the page set, with the evidence attached; this audit stays an audit.
• Do not score product fit on a capability the target audience cannot reach — plan gating, a required technical level, a regional limit. A blocked capability is fit 1, not fit 5.
• Do not fill the coverage matrix to look thorough. "Missing" is a finding; a padded "covered" row hides one.

Before you hand the queue over#

• The whole audit is labelled hypothesis once, up front, and every line carries capability / inferred / speculative.
• Every capability is written as an action with inputs, outputs and limits — no bare feature names.
• All ten job classes were swept per capability; empty classes recorded as empty rather than padded.
• Hidden use cases name the capabilities they rest on and how visible they are in today's docs.
• Audiences cut on all four axes; any audience with no capability behind it marked speculative.
• At least one workflow assemblable from documented capabilities but described nowhere is identified, or its absence is stated.
• The AI and automation question is answered explicitly, one way or the other.
• Search clusters carry no numbers, and any cluster the product already ranks for is demoted to existing-page work.
• The coverage matrix is complete, with a page reference behind every "covered".
• Every gap names one asset type and the reader question it closes.
• The priority queue is scored on all four axes, cut to five actionable items, and handed over unwritten.

Related#

• Jobs to be done — reading a job properly once the sweep has named it.
• Market expansion — what to do with an adjacent market you decide to serve.
• Search intent — matching a page to the depth of the question that reaches it.
• Page set — where the priority queue goes, and how a gap becomes a commissioned page.
• Choosing a lens — when demand gaps outrank a measured reading, and when they do not.