How to prepare an AI tool launch

Most launches fail on preparation rather than on the day. The listing goes up with a logo scraped from a favicon, a tagline written in the form field, and no answer ready for the first person who asks what it does that the incumbent does not.

This is a two-week plan. It is written against how this directory actually works — an ISO-week launch board, a moderator who reads every listing, a first comment that posts itself on approval — but the shape transfers to any launch board.

Two weeks out: fix the page

Everything a directory pre-fills comes out of your HTML, and none of it can be fixed retroactively — the draft is a snapshot of the page on the day you submit. Run the audit first: it is 6 checks, it is free, and it needs no account to show you the score.

• —A title that names the product and says what it does.
• —A square icon of at least 512×512. A 32-pixel favicon is a favicon; it will be upscaled and it will look upscaled. SVG icons are treated as absent.
• —A meta description and an og:image. Neither blocks anything; both decide what your own link looks like when somebody pastes it.

The full version, with the exact remediation text for each, is its own guide.

Also this week: decide about the badge

Not because we need an answer — a launch here is free either way and no part of the listing is withheld. But 3 of the 13 directories we catalogue do make a backlink a condition of their free tier, and if you are going to add a badge footer at all it is better done once, before you start submitting, than five times in a panic.

One week out: write it

Open a text file, not the form. Everything below has a hard limit and copy that overruns is rejected rather than trimmed.

• —Name, 40 characters. The product. Not the company, not the product plus a slogan.
• —Tagline, 60 characters, no trailing full stop. This is the line that decides whether anyone clicks. Write ten and throw away nine.
• —Description, up to 600 characters. Lead with what it does and who for. The reader is deciding, not browsing.
• —First comment, 200 characters. This posts under your listing automatically the moment it is approved, so the page never opens on an empty discussion. No links — your listing already links to your site.
• —Up to 3 categories, from the 31 that currently have listings in them. Look at what is already in the one you are considering.

Picking the day

The board groups launches by ISO week, so the week matters more than the day. Open the weekly boards and look at how full the current one is before you choose: a week with a dozen listings in it is a harder week to place in than the one after it, and nothing about your product changes in seven days.

If you are also going to Product Hunt, note that they publish a hard rule about the clock — launches go live at 12:01am Pacific — and about accounts: “A personal maker account is required — "Company accounts are prohibited." Launches go live at 12:01am Pacific, and you may relaunch when you have a significant new iteration.”

Submitting

Creating a draft is not submitting. The draft sits in your dashboard until you send it for review, which is deliberate — it is the last point at which you can read your own tagline cold.

Then a person reads it. A moderator reads every listing on this site and can turn any of them down; nothing on the pricing page changes that, and the money is refunded if a listing is rejected.

On the day, and after

• —Your first comment is already there. It posts itself on approval. Nothing to remember.
• —Answer the interview. Your dashboard has questions drafted from your own listing. Anything you leave blank never appears on your page, so answering three well beats answering six thinly.
• —Do not ask for votes. Every launch board polices this and ours is no exception — votes that trip our integrity checks stop counting. Hacker News says it in one line: “Please don't ask friends to upvote or comment.”
• —Spread the other submissions over the following week. Each one is an hour, several have queues measured in weeks, and doing them all in one afternoon means writing the same listing badly six times.

Is a prepared launch worth it?

When the page is ready, start a submission — it is free and asks for nothing in return. If you want to see where else it should go, the other 13 directories are here, with what each one costs and demands.