Picks and Shovels: tech marketing for the AI era.

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A 12-point diagnostic for developer companies

Marketing to humans and agents

Developers are still your customer. They are no longer your only reader. AI agents read pricing, documentation, changelogs, public issues, and community discussions before a person puts you on a shortlist.

Score each statement from 0 to 2. Your answers stay in your browser.

Product truth

1. Our category and primary use case are obvious without explanation.
2. Our claims include a mechanism, a consequence, and proof.
3. A competitor cannot truthfully use our positioning by swapping in its name.

Pricing and evaluation

4. An agent can find our prices, tiers, limits, and important exceptions without a sales call.
5. Our pricing and product data exist in structured, machine-readable form.
6. A buyer can compare us with the status quo and primary alternatives.

Documentation

7. Our getting-started guide produces a first successful result on the first attempt.
8. Our docs are open, indexable, semantically structured, and available without authentication.
9. Our documentation covers scenarios and failure modes, not only endpoints.

Trust and measurement

10. Our public product record supports our marketing claims.
11. Independent practitioners can verify the product's value in their own words.
12. We measure successful adoption, not only page views.

Your score

0 / 24

Invisible

Humans may understand the pitch, but agents cannot verify it.

Build the rest of the operating system

Picks and Shovels covers positioning, content, community, documentation, product-led growth, sales, measurement, and leadership.

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