launch-post

---
name: launch-post
description: Use when announcing a product, a project or a release in a post or on a manual page.
---

# Launch and product posts

- **Lead with the argument, not the product.** Title is the claim, the
  first paragraph pays it off, the product shows up around paragraph five
  as the answer to the argument. A title that announces a product tells
  scrollers "ad" before they read a word.
- **No product name and no brand word in the title** when a topic word
  already implies it (a word for the whole problem pulls every crowd that has
  it, not only the users of one product). A tagline is not a title; it stops
  people the way a billboard does. The tagline goes as the LAST line,
  after the argument has landed.
- **Disclose once, plainly, in the first lines.** "I work at the company
  that makes this" or "this is my own project" when that's true. Never say
  the employer twice. A good form: "(my employer, so check it yourself)".
- **Numbers only if you can defend them in the thread.** A benchmark that
  invites "so yours got a special setup and the baseline didn't?" makes the
  thread about the benchmark. Hold contested numbers for a
  second post when they can be measured clean; that second post is its own
  launch.
- **Something to look at.** The best posts each have one concrete thing:
  4,681 vs 251 tokens, or the injection that almost worked. With numbers
  held back, a five-line code snippet does that job.
- **Early-development honesty beats a challenge close** for a launch: "I
  obviously havent been able to try every scenario so if you hit a bug or
  want something it doesn't do, open an issue" (an issue, not a PR; a PR is
  code), then one sentence giving the reader a job ("if Claude makes a
  mistake for you that isn't on the list, tell me, that's the next thing I
  fix").
- **Nothing negative about a vendor you work for or depend on.** The fault
  is the habit, the data or the setup. "I got tired of seeing people blame
  the tool for things that aren't its fault" is the register.
- **One person's own projects are "I", not "we",** including the manual pages that
  describe them.