READU tool catches and fixes README bugs with 75% precision

Researchers Doehyun Baek, Kilian Krampf, and Michael Pradel have introduced READU, a tool that automatically detects and repairs bugs in README files—documentation mistakes that can cause users runtime errors or wasted debugging time. The key insight is that README bugs often appear as inconsistencies between the documentation and two sources of truth: internal repository facts (e.g., source code) and external facts (e.g., dependency versions). READU applies a high-recall commit filter, runs parallel consistency checkers, uses an alert judge to filter false positives, and automatically synthesizes documentation patches.

Evaluated on 6,000 recent commits from six popular repositories including Linux and Spring Boot, READU detected 244 true README bugs with 75% precision, consuming under $0.01 and less than one minute per commit on average. It correctly repaired 217 of these bugs. The team reported 66 found bugs to maintainers, of which 44 have been confirmed and 26 already fixed. This approach promises to dramatically reduce the burden of keeping documentation synchronized with ever-changing codebases.