Goal

This page serves as an overview of the different information sources on OpenSTEF we have, and what we need to do documentation-wise for the stable release of OpenSTEF V4.

Documentation outline

OpenSTEF has several places for documentation, each with their own target audience:

OpenSTEF repo README.md: Developer oriented, usually only read the first time a developer uses OpenSTEF, important for first impression about the library. For further details, developers usually go to the Github Pages Documentation website.
OpenSTEF website (Github Pages): Mostly developer oriented, but also more detailed on what OpenSTEF is. Usually visited by developers that want to know more about OpenSTEF or are (starting to) actively developing with OpenSTEF, or people that want a bit more technical detail on OpenSTEF (like architecture) than is available on the LF Energy Page.
OpenSTEF LF Energy Page: Business oriented, for anyone that wants to know more about OpenSTEF in general, top result of Google search “openstef”.
OpenSTEF (LF Energy) Confluence: Community oriented, usually only visited by maintainers or active community members.

Content per documentation place

This section describes what content we want per documentation place, including why.

Github README.md

Target audience & function

The front door of the project, mostly visited by Developers and less by Business oriented people (those will more likely go to the LF Energy Project Page). Specifically:

New users → First impression of project, very briefly what the project does, how to install it and run examples, where to find further information
Power users → Links to documentation and support
Contributors → How to contribute (run tests, create PR, etc)
Researchers → How to get started, where to find examples, and how to cite the project

Suggested outline

Logo
Badges
Optional: Table of contents if long page (goal should be not to create long page)
What is OpenSTEF (max 4 sentences, with link to OpenSTEF website for more)
Brief monorepo overview
How to install
Examples (just containing link to examples folder, example folder should then have a README.md with some basic instructions/overview of available examples)
License
Contributing (just containing links to the relevant pages from .github repo
Citations (how to cite)
Contact (link to support from .github repo)

OpenSTEF LF Energy Project Page

This page already looks quite good. I would suggest:

Updating the described use cases (see LFE Summit 2025 presentation) and include district heating as well
Update the “How OpenSTEF Works” section as it is outdated and incorrect (e.g. supports up to 48 hours is false)
Making clear that OpenSTEF is not an application with a dashboard, and link perhaps to implementation partners and example implementations
Update the “Learn More” links (still has dashboard docs and teams link for example)
Update video’s (think about what to share)
- It would be valuable to have at some point a short introduction video with what OpenSTEF is and have this as the first/top video.
Add the value/advantages of OpenSTEF (costs, risks, efficiency)
Add call to action (contact us for a meeting, etc)
Add time line (e.g. for when to expect deep learning, meta learning)

OpenSTEF (LF Energy) Confluence

The place for community documents like community meeting notes, design proposals for review by the community, and community plans/roadmaps. This is already used for this purpose. The only thing that needs to be updated (as this page is still shown in the first page of Google search) is the landing page of the confluence, as it is very outdated OpenSTEF . I would suggest to use a format that is a bit of a hybrid between the Github README.md and the LF Energy project page. The goal would be to give a quick overview on what OpenSTEF is, with the main focus to redirect to the relevant pages for more info (also to prevent duplicate info that will be outdated in the future). Furthermore, the roadmap for the next year needs to be documented (currently only 2025 is there, and this is also required for the OpenSSF silver badge)

OpenSTEF website (Github Pages)

Should contain:

In depth what OpenSTEF is and what it can do
- Make clear that OpenSTEF on itself is a machine learning Library, rather than a full stack application (nor a model), although there will be example implementations. This is something that gets many people confused as they assume it is an application.
- A subpage/tab explaining all the common OpenSTEF use cases:
  - Congestion forecasts
  - Free space estimation
  - Grid loss forecasts
  - Transport forecasts
  - District heating
  - MV Route congestion management + topology using PGM
Architecture diagrams (not archimate, but like the Sia pictures shown in the community meeting) on several component levels:
- “Repo level” → how the components of the mono repo fit together (see FOSDEM 2026 slide)
- One for each component → Perfect example is the Sia picture for the OpenSTEF-meta component
API documentation with embedded examples (Reference)
Getting started / tutorials: (offline-example/workshop style notebooks)
- Quick start guide:
  - Fastest way to get started (train model & create forecast) without too much details (1 page, see https://power-grid-model.readthedocs.io/en/stable/quickstart.html for reference)
- First use (with as much presets as possible):
  - Loading and preparing data
  - Training model
  - Creating forecast
  - Evaluating
  - Energy split?
- Backtesting:
  - Liander 2024 backtest with two model
- Advanced:
  - Custom targetprovider
  - Custom workflow
  - Custom feature engineering
- Note: check if openstef-offline-example repo still makes sense to use, or if this can be put in the mono-repo
How-to Guides: (task-specific that is not covered by tutorials)
- [example-implementation] How to setup a simple deployment with X (simple cron-job, Dagster)
- How to integrate data retrieval/posting with X (s3, databricks?, influx)
- How to migrate from OpenSTEF 3 (using feedback received from Sigholm)
Concept explanations (example based blog-style explanations of forecasting concepts):
- Interpreting forecast results
- Quantiles/confidence interval
- Model choice/use case
- What are important predictors, weather dependency
- Fallback strategies
FAQ (Answers on questions we commonly get at conferences)
- Do you need topology of the grid?
- What do you mean with short term?
- What makes OpenSTEF special compared to other forecasting frameworks? (what is the magic?)
- What is the “accuracy” or “quality” of the forecasts output by OpenSTEF?
- How expensive is it to run?
- What about deep learning?
- Etc.
Unmet criteria from https://www.bestpractices.dev/en/projects/5585/silver that is not yet covered by the above

The landing page should contain what OpenSTEF is, links to relevant places, how to get in contact.

OpenSTEF 4.0 Documentation Plan