Google is attempting to make it easier for developers to access its documentation by creating the Developer Knowledge API and corresponding MCP server, both now in public preview.
The Developer Knowledge API allows developers to search and retrieve documentation for Google’s services in Markdown. This includes documentation from firebase.google.com, developer.android.com, docs.cloud.google.com, and more.
The two main functions that the API supports are SearchDocumentChunks, which finds page URIs and content snippets based on a query, and GetDocument or BatchGetDocuments, which retrieves the full content of the search result.
Google is re-indexing all of its documentation within 24 hours of a service being updated to ensure that developers can stay up-to-date with information related to the latest releases. According to Google, a challenge developers face when using AI coding tools is that they may be leveraging outdated documentation, resulting in responses that aren’t aligned with the latest features and capabilities.
“Large Language Models (LLMs) are only as good as the context they are given. When building with Google technology, developers need their AI assistants to know the latest Firebase features, the most recent Android API changes, and the current best practices for Google Cloud,” Jess Kuras, technical writer at Google, wrote in a blog post.
In addition to the Developer Knowledge API, Google is releasing a related MCP server to enable development teams to connect it to their IDEs and AI coding assistants. The company explained this can enable more advanced capabilities as developers are writing code, such as being able to ask the best way to implement push notifications in Firebase, check the docs to find the best way to fix a specific error, or compare two different services for a particular use case.
Currently, information is returned as unstructured Markdown, but Google says as it works towards general availability, it plans to introduce support for structured content like code sample objects and API reference entities.
More information about the Developer Knowledge API can be found here.
