Guides are comprehensive, conceptually-focused documents providing stand-alone introductions to core packages in addition to the underlying astronomical concepts.
Tutorials are step-by-step cookbooks for common activities that incorporate several packages. They are more specific and less conceptual than Guides but more extended than Examples.
Documentation is the complete description of a package with all requisite details, including usage, dependencies, and examples.
Examples are stand-alone code snippets that live in the astropy documentation that demonstrate a specific functionality within a package.
Documentation has the complete description of an Astropy package with all requisite details including usage, dependencies, and examples. Documentation is comprehensive reference material—it’s possibly a little dry, but is both basic and high level.
See the Astropy documentation for a structured view of the functionality within the Astropy project.