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.
Examples are stand-alone code snippets that live in the Astropy documentation which demonstrate a specific functionality within a package. Examples don’t provide conceptual background/context or exhaustive explanation of the functionality being demonstrated. Examples have less explanation—they may prompt questions which can be answered by scrolling up and down into the documentation.
See the Astropy Examples for a structured view of the examples within the Astropy project.