Launch posts

Each channel has its own audience, rules and taboos. A post that wins on Show HN gets removed on r/programming and ignored on 小红书. This skill picks channels on purpose and prepares one native draft per target — or, where the platform asks for the author's own words, the facts the author writes from.

Inputs

Read these first; ask only for what's missing and record answers (or, with no human available, your assumptions) in .megaphone/decisions.md.

• .megaphone/brief.md: one-liner, audience, bullets, origin story, dated contrast, Claims we won't make and the standard disclaimer. If it's missing, run ../launch-positioning/SKILL.md first (a quick brief is enough).
• .megaphone/audit.md: open blockers and Risk & readiness (third parties, other people's data, capacity, reachability). Drafting can start with blockers open; when posts can go out is decided by the gate in ../launch-plan/SKILL.md.
• .megaphone/decisions.md: is the user the author, their accounts and how established, which languages they can read and reply in, where they plan to launch first, timezone and free hours, and where the project has been posted before.
• The README (quick start, visual, hosted link). If .megaphone/readme-first-screen.md exists and hasn't been applied yet, draft against that proposal and say so in the channel table — posts must match the README visitors will land on.
• Any launch copy already in the repo (docs/launch*): reuse what's accurate and note where you differ.

Step 1 — Choose channels

Read channels/README.md and start from where this audience is: developer tools → HN, Reddit, language communities; end-user apps → where those users already browse (小红书, 即刻, B 站, Product Hunt, r/SideProject…). For a plugin or integration, the host app's channels (plugin directory, release notes, forum) often beat everything else: see ecosystems.md, and ask the host's maintainer before posting in their space. A regional channel with no playbook (e.g. Zenn for a Japanese user) can be a candidate; read its own rules first.

Mark each candidate ✅ / ⚠️ / ❌ on:

1. Audience fit: do the people here have the problem?
2. Format fit: can it be shown the way this channel likes, with assets ready in time (a no-sign-up demo for Show HN, 3–6 images for 小红书, a personal story for 即刻)?
3. Account fit: does the user have an account that won't be filtered (new ones often are on HN, Reddit and V2EX), in a language they can read and reply in? Submission channels usually need only a GitHub login or email; a language the user can't read is ❌.

Draft every channel with no ❌ and at least two ✅, up to six posting channels (if more qualify, keep the six with the most ✅ and say which you cut). Compounding channels — awesome lists and newsletters, including HelloGitHub and 阮一峰周刊 — are extra, drafted whenever they pass the same test. GitHub itself (topics, social preview, a release) needs no post: add its to-dos from github-native.md to the table. If the user isn't the author, skip Show HN (it's "for something you've made"). If authorship is only unconfirmed (no human to ask), keep the row as blocked: confirm authorship and write the fact sheet anyway. A host or community space that passes the test but needs a maintainer's or moderator's OK first (ecosystems.md) gets the decision ask first instead of a post: save the ask, drafted from that file's template, as posts/<channel>.md with an ## Ask section (to whom, where), Status ask drafted; user sends. It doesn't count toward the six until they say yes; when the user reports a yes, rerun this skill for that row and write the post (if that makes seven, drop the one with the fewest ✅ and say so).

Repost check before HN or Reddit. HN: open https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?query=github.com/OWNER/REPO&restrictSearchableAttributes=url&tags=story, then search the project name at hn.algolia.com. Reddit: search reddit.com and each target subreddit for the repo URL and name; if Reddit blocks automated requests, write [TODO: check for earlier posts]. HN allows a small number of reposts only if the story hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so, and never delete-and-repost (FAQ); each subreddit sets its own rule. After a big earlier thread, skip the channel or wait for a major release.

Save the table to .megaphone/posts/README.md (in the user's language) and show it in chat:

# Channels — <project>
README assumed: current README / proposal in readme-first-screen.md (not applied yet)

| Channel / target | Audience | Format | Account | Decision | Why (incl. repost check) | File | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Show HN | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | author writes | no earlier submissions (hn.algolia.com, <date>) | hacker-news.md | fact sheet ready; author to write |
| r/commandline | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ | draft | none found | reddit-commandline.md | [TODO] origin story |
| r/ghostty | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ | ask first | host community, no showcase thread found | reddit-ghostty.md | ask drafted; user sends |
| 小红书 | ✅ | ⚠️ | ❌ | skip | user has no account | — | — |
| GitHub itself | — | — | — | to-dos | <topics, social preview, release> | — | — |

Step 2 — Prepare one file per target

Name files after the playbook: one per posting target (posts/hacker-news.md, posts/reddit-commandline.md, posts/reddit-golang.md), one per submission channel with a section per target (posts/awesome-lists.md, posts/newsletters.md; HelloGitHub and 阮一峰周刊 have their own playbooks and files). Follow the playbook in channels/: title rules, length, language, links, first comment, pitfalls.

Author-written channels. Some platforms ask for the author's own words, and their playbooks say so: Show HN (hacker-news.md), a DEV launch article (dev-blogs.md), the Lobsters title and comment (lobsters.md), V2EX (a written rule bans AI-generated text in topics and replies — v2ex.md), 掘金 articles and 沸点 (AI-generated technical content counts as plagiarism and is never recommended — juejin.md), and awesome lists whose rules refuse LLM-written entries or PRs (awesome-lists.md). For these, don't write prose: use the same file and header, but replace ## Title / ## Body with ## Facts for the author (bullet facts for each part of the playbook's outline, [TODO] where only the author knows) and keep Likely questions as facts to answer from, not scripted replies. Their Status is "author writes" until the user says the text is done.

For every other channel, write:

# <Channel> — <target> — draft
Where: <exact URL, node, subreddit or submission form>
Window: <the playbook's window in the playbook's own timezone, e.g. "08:00–10:00 PT (heuristic)", or "no data — chose <X> because <Y>">
Account: <which account posts>

## Title
<only if the channel has titles>
## Body
## First comment / follow-up
<only if the playbook uses one>

## Likely questions
- "<predictable objection>" — <short honest answer, or [TODO: ask the author]>

## Checklist before posting
- [ ] Rule check: <the 1–3 rules most likely to get this removed: playbook + this target's own rules (sidebar, CONTRIBUTING.md), or [TODO: read <where>]>
- [ ] Risk check: nothing from brief → Claims we won't make; disclaimer included (if the project touches other platforms)
- [ ] AI disclosure: <what this channel expects, e.g. 小红书: declare AI help with the publish page's AI-content declaration; or "none required">
- [ ] Links work and are reachable for this audience
- [ ] Assets ready: <images / GIF / video this post needs>
- [ ] Reply window free (see plan.md)

(Author-written files keep the same checklist, plus - [ ] The author wrote the text in their own words.)

• Window: keep it in the playbook's own timezone. launch-plan converts it to the user's local date and time in plan.md, so moving the launch (even across a DST switch) never leaves stale times in the posts.
• Likely questions: 3–5 objections this audience will raise ("why not X?", "why does it need Y?", "is this allowed?", "what about my data?"), answered from the repo and brief. Never answer a legal question with a guarantee; point to the disclaimer.

Writing rules for every channel

• Lead with the problem or the result, not the tech stack (that comes second).
• Say you made it (or your relation to it). Many subreddits require it; all expect it. In neutral-blurb formats (HelloGitHub, 阮一峰周刊, newsletters, awesome lists) disclose it only the way the form or list asks, e.g. 【开源自荐】 in a 阮一峰周刊 title.
• Label AI help where the channel asks for it. These drafts are AI-assisted. 小红书 requires AI-assisted content (including AI-polished text) to be declared at publish time; some subreddits and DEV have rules on AI-written posts; V2EX bans AI-generated text in topics and replies, and 掘金 never recommends AI-generated articles (fact sheet only for both — see v2ex.md, juejin.md). Follow each playbook, and when in doubt, let the author rewrite it in their own words.
• One link: the one this channel's readers can use — the hosted app for end users, the repo for developers, none where outbound links are banned (小红书's 2025 交易导流 rules, up to account bans; say what to search for, as its playbook does). Add the repo as a second link only where the playbook template has a separate repo or source line (Source:, Repo:, 开源地址, 仓库链接…).
• Be specific and modest. Real numbers and limitations beat adjectives; contrast claims come only from the brief, with their date.
• Say what it doesn't do yet, except in neutral-blurb formats, which you write the way the editor or list would print them.
• Never ask for upvotes, stars or likes, or coordinate friends to vote: it breaks HN, Product Hunt and Reddit rules and gets posts killed. (A quiet one-line note in the project's own README or tool is fine; asking in posts, DMs or in return for help is not.)
• Native language and tone. Write each post from scratch in its channel's language and register (HN: plain and technical; 即刻: personal; 小红书: visual, benefit-first).
• No two posts identical. Reuse facts, not sentences.
• The author's voice comes only from the author. "I built it because…" comes from the brief's origin story or the user's own words in decisions.md; otherwise write [TODO: in your words, why you built it]. Unknown numbers stay [TODO] too.

Step 3 — Hand off

Summarise in chat: the channel table, where each file is, which drafts are ready to paste, which are fact sheets the author writes from, which still have [TODO]s (and what each needs), the ask first messages the user sends, and the assets to make. Hand off to ../launch-plan/SKILL.md for order, dates and reply windows. Remind the user that they publish manually, and that right after each post goes live they add a row to .megaphone/log.csv: date as YYYY-MM-DD, time as 24 h HH:MM in their timezone, channel as the file's base name (hacker-news, reddit-commandline, v2ex), and the post's URL — so launch-review can attribute results.