Launch plan

Asked to plan a launch, a model produces a checklist that assumes a crowd is waiting: post everywhere at once, count the total market as the audience, position against a named competitor, and treat launch day as the finish line. Then the launch lands to silence, because the crowd was never there and the plan had no answer for the quiet. This skill positions against doing nothing, sizes the audience you can actually reach, and plans for the likely quiet outcome.

Fit to the project

Read the situation before writing the plan.

1. Find out who already pays attention to this maker or product: an email list and its real open rate, existing users, a following on one platform, a community they are part of. This reachable audience is the launch, and it is almost always far smaller than the total market. If it is close to zero, the honest first step is building it, not announcing.
2. Detect what the buyer does today instead. Read support tickets, forum threads, and sales notes for the workaround people currently use, which is often a spreadsheet, a manual process, or nothing. That workaround is the real competitor.
3. Find where the target audience already spends attention: which forum, which subreddit, which newsletter, which conference. Launching where the maker is comfortable rather than where the audience already gathers is the most common wasted effort.

Non-negotiables

1. Position against the alternative the buyer actually has, and include doing nothing. Most launches lose to inertia, not to a competitor, and a plan that only compares against a named rival has no answer for the buyer who will simply keep coping. Ignoring the do-nothing option is the failure that sinks the most launches.
2. Plan for the reachable audience, not the total market. A market of ten million means nothing if you can reach 300 people this month. Sizing the plan to the big number produces targets that guarantee the launch looks like a failure.
3. Choose channels by where the audience's attention already sits, not by what is easy for the maker. A perfect post in a channel the audience does not read reaches no one.
4. Assume the launch lands quietly and plan the follow-through, because a single quiet launch is the normal outcome, not the exception. A plan that only describes the best case has nothing to do on the far more likely ordinary day.
5. Never buy or fabricate attention: no purchased reviews, no fake upvotes, no sockpuppet comments, no invented testimonials. It is against the terms of every serious platform, it is often unlawful, and a public unmasking costs more than the launch could ever earn. Refuse to plan it even when asked.

Procedure

Step 1, position against the real alternative

Write down what the buyer does today to solve this problem, in one sentence, including the option of doing nothing. State why your thing is worth the switching cost, because a buyer with a working spreadsheet needs a reason large enough to overcome the effort of change. If the only honest answer is a small improvement over doing nothing, the launch messaging has to be about the cost of the status quo, not about features. The positioning method sits in references/positioning.md.

Step 2, size the reachable audience

Count the people you can actually put this in front of in the launch window: list subscribers times a realistic open rate, community members who will see a post, followers who see any given message. This number, not the market size, sets the launch expectations. Write down the expected result at this size so success and failure are defined before launch day, not rationalized after. Sizing detail is in references/audience.md.

Step 3, pick the channels where attention already sits

For the target audience, list the two or three places they already gather and pay attention. Rank by reachability and fit, not by size. Pick the smallest number of channels you can execute well, because a strong presence in one right channel beats a thin presence in five. Note the norms of each channel, since a post that works on one reads as spam on another. Channel selection guidance is in references/audience.md.

Step 4, sequence the launch and its prerequisites

List what has to be true before launch day: the page live, the signup working, the first users ready to vouch, the payment path tested, the support inbox watched. Order the launch as a sequence, not a single day: warm the closest audience first, gather early proof, then widen. A launch that fires everything at once has no way to fix a broken step before the whole audience sees it. Sequencing detail is in references/positioning.md.

Step 5, run launch day on a written plan

Write the launch-day plan: what posts where, in what order, who responds to comments and questions, and how fast. Presence in the first hours matters more than the announcement itself, because a launch is a conversation and an unanswered comment is a dropped one. Have the answers to the obvious hard questions written before they are asked.

Step 6, plan for the quiet outcome

Write down, before launch, what you will do if the launch lands quietly, which is the likely case. The plan is not to relaunch louder. It is to learn: talk to the few who did engage, find what resonated, fix the positioning, and reach the audience again through a different channel or a narrower message. A launch is a start of distribution, not a one-time event, and the makers who win treat a quiet day as data rather than a verdict. The recovery method is in references/audience.md.

Self-audit

• Is the positioning written against what the buyer does today, with doing nothing named explicitly?
• Is the reachable audience counted as a real number, separate from the total market?
• Is the expected launch result written down before launch day?
• Are the chosen channels the ones where the audience already pays attention?
• Is there a prerequisite list, and is every item verified before the launch fires?
• Is there a written plan for who answers comments and how fast on launch day?
• Is there a specific follow-through plan for the case where the launch lands quietly?
• Is the plan free of any purchased, faked, or fabricated attention?

Honest limits

This skill plans the launch. It does not write the announcement copy or the substance of the posts, which is content-craft, or the page the traffic lands on, which is landing-convert. Run those for the assets the plan calls for.

It does not choose the pricing or the business model behind the launch, which is business-model, and it does not verify any market-size figure you bring to it, which is numbers-check and reality-check. The audience-sizing and timing guidance here is a rule of thumb for setting expectations, not a forecast, and it does not replace talking to real buyers.

When the user says "stop", "just execute", or "skip the launch checks", that is the off switch. Deliver the plan as asked and stop applying the checks for the rest of the session unless asked again. The refusal to plan faked attention in non-negotiable 5 stays even then.