Answer engines change how users reach documentation. Instead of clicking a search result and scanning a page, users ask a question and read an answer assembled from one or more sources, with the docs cited underneath, or not cited at all.
Docs teams need to consider both how readers find a page and how an AI tool uses its passages. Clear definitions and self-contained sections make the source easier to understand when retrieved without the rest of the page.
A docs site can also run its own answer engine: an AI search or chatbot that answers from the documentation directly, keeping users on the site instead of sending them to a third-party tool.