Important changes to Qiskit documentation and learning resources
Today, we’re announcing important changes to Qiskit.org that you should be aware of. Starting on November 29, 2023, Qiskit Documentation and Qiskit educational resources will live on IBM Quantum Platform and will be removed from Qiskit.org. We will be slowly moving content over until then.
Qiskit is, first and foremost, an open source programming language and technology for programming quantum computers. We remain committed to our open source community, and value the contributions they have made since Qiskit’s inception. However, it has been challenging to maintain Qiskit documentation and educational resources in their current form. We’ve also received lots of user feedback that these resources needed to be consolidated and better-organized to make Qiskit easier to use on real quantum hardware. Our hope is that the community will no longer need to jump between scattered, disjointed resources to develop quantum programs.
That’s why we’re migrating Qiskit educational resources and documentation into the IBM Quantum Platform — to offer a more unified experience for users. Our eventual plan is to sunset all of the content on Qiskit.org and move it to the IBM Quantum Platform.
IBM Quantum is committed to open-source software development and education, so none of the old content is going away. Community-built content, such as the Qiskit Textbook, will be handed off to the community and remain available on GitHub.
Things will look a little different — so let’s walk you through the changes.
Qiskit Documentation
Qiskit and Qiskit Runtime documentation are moving to https://docs.quantum-computing.ibm.com/
This migration is ongoing, with content due to be fully removed from Qiskit.org by the end of the year. Qiskit.org/documentation and qiskit.org/ecosystem/ibm-runtime/ will go away and redirect to https://docs.quantum-computing.ibm.com.
Docs will also be structured differently. Instead of API reference, tutorials, how-to guides and explanations, the content will be split into the following sections (to support natural workflows):
- Install: Begin using our tools and platforms with install and setup instructions.
- Build: Design and develop quantum circuits with primitives and advanced methods like dynamic circuits and mid-circuit measurements. You can also find our circuit library here.
- Verify: Validate and evaluate your quantum circuits.
- Run: Run on our hardware with job configuration options such as sessions.
- API reference: Find API references for Qiskit, Qiskit Runtime IBM Client, Qiskit IBM Runtime Rest API, and Qiskit IBM Provider in the API reference drop-down menu above. You can also find the Error code registry here.
Users will have two ways to submit feedback and report bugs. For non API ref content, they should report issues/feedback in https://github.com/Qiskit/documentation/issues/new/choose. For any user interface-related issues, click the feedback button.
Qiskit and Runtime docs will remain open source, and we still welcome community feedback and contributions to documentation. The translations program will also continue. We are currently working to define a robust process to facilitate contributions, so we are temporarily pausing contribution reviews until the content migration is complete. More details to come.
Qiskit Textbook
Starting today, the following courses will redirect to the new learning app:
- Basics of quantum information, with John Watrous
- Fundamentals of quantum algorithms, with John Watrous
- Variational algorithm design
- Qiskit tutorials
We invite you to explore IBM Quantum Learning to read these courses and explore the new Quantum-Safe Cryptographycourse. Over the next few months, we’re planning more free courses to help you learn foundations of quantum information, and experiment with Qiskit Runtime and IBM Quantum.
We will sunset the textbook and the syllabus creation tool on November 29, 2023. Legacy textbook pages will remain available through a public archive on Github. Once archived, this content will not be maintained by IBMers, and new external contributions will not be accepted. We understand that the textbook is a much-beloved resource, and you’ll still be able to stand up the textbook locally with the instructions in the README.
Why we’re making this change
Moving docs and learning resources will bring things closer to the same platform that developers, researchers, and students use every day for running actual workloads on quantum systems. Now, they’ll be able to find all of their resources in one, easy-to-navigate place.
IBM Quantum Platform will now be the home for all education, from the basics of quantum computing and programming with Qiskit to experimenting and prototyping with Qiskit Runtime on IBM Quantum systems. We’ll continue to develop this content in the open to promote trust and transparency within the quantum community, but moving it to the IBM Quantum Platform will help to ensure the quality of this content continues to be high as possible.
We’re excited about this change, and hope that the result will be a seamless quantum computing experience for everyone. We look forward to building together.
