12 Launch Tactics You Can Automate With AI

Find where your buyers hang out

You can't launch to nobody. Before any directory or post, you need a short list of the places your buyers already ask for help: the subreddits, the search queries, the words they use for the problem. That list decides what you write for every other tactic.

1. Paste your landing page into First Users. It reads the page and writes a buyer profile, pain points, Reddit communities and ready-made Google searches. Signed out you see a preview; a free account unlocks the full report.
2. Join three of the subreddits. Read the rules and the top posts of the month before you write.
3. Save the search queries. You need them for tactic 2.

No account? The same thing with any chatbot:

Here is my landing page text:
[paste it]

1. Describe the person most likely to pay for this in 3 sentences: their job, the moment they feel the problem, what they try today.
2. List 10 subreddits where that person asks for help with this problem. Only real, active subreddits; say if you are unsure.
3. List 10 Google searches they would type when the problem hits, in their words, not mine.
4. List the 5 phrases they use for the problem that my page does not use.

Reply in threads that already rank

A Reddit thread on page one of Google already gets the traffic you want, and it keeps getting it for months. Google AI Overviews quote Reddit threads too, so one good reply in the right thread works as search and as AI visibility. It is the highest return move I know for a product with no audience.

1. Search the queries from tactic 1, then click Forums under the search box. Everything on that tab is a discussion Google already trusts.
2. Open the threads from the last year that are still getting comments.
3. Paste the thread into the prompt below, then rewrite the draft in your own voice. Answer the question first. Mention your product only if it really solves the problem, and say you built it.

Here is a Reddit thread (title, post and top comments):
[paste]

Draft a reply that:
- answers the question in the first two sentences, with a specific answer, not "it depends"
- adds one thing the other comments missed
- mentions [my product] only if it directly solves the problem, in one line, and says "I built it"
- is under 150 words, no headings, no bullet points, no marketing words
Then list anything in my reply that would break this subreddit's rules: [paste rules].

Write every tagline length once

Every directory asks for the same description at a different length, and rewriting it in each form is where launch week evenings go. Write all the lengths once, check they fit, and keep them in one note you paste from.

My product: [name]
What it does: [one plain sentence]
Who it is for: [the person from tactic 1]
What makes it different: [one fact, not an adjective]

Write my description at four exact lengths:
- 60 characters max (a tagline)
- 80 characters max
- 160 characters max (a meta description)
- 260 characters max (a short description)
Rules: count the characters and show the count after each one. Lead with what it does, not with the product name. No "revolutionary", "seamless", "powerful" or "AI-powered". Every length must stand on its own.

Models miscount characters, so paste the results into Meta Title and Description. It counts characters and measures the pixel width Google cuts at, and nothing leaves your browser.

Skip the directories AI never names

There are more launch directories than evenings. The ones worth your time are the ones people find when they ask AI where to look. We counted the ChatGPT and Google AI answers that name or cite each of the 193 directories in the Nick Launches tracker: 51 show up in 100 or more answers, 46 have never been named once, and 35 of the 51 cited ones are free to join.

1. Open the Launch Directories tracker and sort by AI cited.
2. Filter to the ones cited in 100 or more answers, then to Free.
3. Sign in so Done and Skip stick, and work top down.

The AI cited count is a running count in DataForSEO's index of Google AI and ChatGPT answers (US, English), not a monthly rate. Figures read from the tracker on October 7, 2026.

Stop typing the same form

Name, tagline, description, URL, logo. Every directory wants the same five things. The NL Launch Companion extension knows the forms of all 193 directories in the tracker: one click fills the form from your launch profile, and Done or Skip syncs straight back to the tracker.

1. Install it from the Autofill page. It works in Chrome and any Chromium browser: Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera.
2. Open a directory from your tactic 4 list and click fill.
3. Read the form before you submit. The extension types; you still decide what goes out.

Post a Show HN

Hacker News is the third most cited free directory in the tracker: 41,656 ChatGPT and Google AI answers name it. Show HN is the part of it built for things you made. It rewards plain writing and punishes marketing, which is exactly where a first AI draft goes wrong, so give the model strict rules.

Here is my README:
[paste]

Write a Show HN post:
1. Title: "Show HN: [Name] – [what it does in plain words]", under 80 characters, no adjectives.
2. A first comment from me, in the first person, under 250 words: why I built it, how it works technically, what is still rough, and the one piece of feedback I want.
Rules: no superlatives, no "excited to share", no pricing pitch, no call to sign up. Write like an engineer explaining it to another engineer.

• Show HN is for something people can try. A sign-up wall or a landing page with a waitlist is the classic way to get flagged.
• Never ask friends to upvote. HN detects voting rings and buries the post.
• Stay in the comments all day. Answering questions is the launch.

Make your page readable by AI

Assistants read your page before they can name it. If the text only appears after JavaScript runs, if robots.txt says nothing about AI crawlers, or if there is no llms.txt map of the pages that matter, an assistant gets less of you than a person does. The fixes are an afternoon of plumbing.

1. Run your launch page through the AI Readiness Test. No account. It scores 14 checks across discoverability, machine readable content, bot access, structure and trust.
2. Fix whatever it lists under Fix first, then run it again.
3. The usual three: an llms.txt at the root, a Markdown twin of key pages, and Product schema.

Here are the URLs and titles from my sitemap:
[paste]

Write an llms.txt file for my site following the llmstxt.org format:
- an H1 with the product name and a one line blockquote of what it does
- a "Docs" or "Product" section with the 5 to 10 pages an assistant should read first, each as "- [Title](URL): one line on what the page answers"
- an "Optional" section for everything else
Do not invent URLs; only use the ones I gave you.

Ask AI what it recommends

Your buyers already ask AI what to use. The cheapest visibility tracker is to ask the same questions yourself, write down who gets named, and note which pages the answer leans on. Those pages are your target list: get mentioned there and you have a path into the answer.

My product: [one sentence]. My buyer: [from tactic 1].
Write the 10 questions this buyer would type into ChatGPT when they are about to choose a tool like mine. Mix "best X for Y", "X vs Y", "how do I [job]" and "alternatives to [competitor]". Use their words, not mine.

1. Ask each question in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Claude and Perplexity, signed out where you can.
2. Log the date, the engine, who got named and the cited URLs in a sheet.
3. Repeat monthly. A change in who gets named is the earliest signal you will get.

For why the cited pages changed this year, read What ChatGPT actually cites now.

Turn on Bing's AI Performance

Bing Webmaster Tools has a report Google Search Console does not: AI Performance, in public preview. It counts how often Microsoft Copilot and partners cite your pages, and which pages. Ours shows 2K citations over the last three months, with an average of 3 cited pages.

1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and choose Import from Google Search Console. It brings over your verified sites in a couple of clicks.
2. Wait. Bing says data can take up to 48 hours to show.
3. Open AI Performance in the sidebar. Check which pages get cited and make those the best pages on your site.

Publish one number nobody else has

People and assistants quote numbers. If the only place a number exists is your page, every article that needs it has to point at you. Ours: we counted the AI answers that name each of 193 launch directories, and "51 of 193 show up in AI answers" became a carousel, a column in the tracker and a line in this guide.

My product: [one sentence]. My category: [category].
Suggest 10 questions my category argues about that I could answer with a count I can actually collect myself this week (from my own data, public pages, an API or a small manual check). For each: the exact question, where the data comes from, how long collecting it takes, and the one sentence headline it would produce.

• Pick one you can finish in a day. A small true number beats a big shaky one.
• Publish the number with the date, the method and the source on one page.
• Update it on a schedule and say when you did.

Turn one launch into 6 posts

You have one story: what you built, for whom, and the one thing you learned. Each platform wants it in a different shape. Our last carousel went to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads and YouTube Shorts from one set of slides, with the caption rewritten for each.

Here is my launch story in plain words:
[what I built, who it is for, one thing I learned, one number]

Rewrite it as:
1. Instagram caption: hook line, 4 short paragraphs, a save CTA, 5 hashtags max
2. TikTok caption: under 150 characters plus 3 hashtags
3. LinkedIn post: first line under 12 words, short paragraphs, no hashtags in the body
4. Threads post: under 500 characters, conversational
5. Facebook post: 3 short paragraphs
6. YouTube Shorts title under 70 characters and a 2 line description
Keep every fact and number identical across all six. Do not add claims I did not give you.

The last rule matters most. Models love to round numbers up and add promises between versions, so check every number against the original before posting.

Launch from your coding agent

You built the product in your editor with an agent. You can launch it from there too. Connect the Nick Launches MCP server once, ask your agent (Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Cursor) to submit your URL, and it drafts the listing from your site. It can audit the site before you launch, and you review the draft and publish it yourself.

claude mcp add --transport http nicklaunches https://nicklaunches.com/api/mcp/

Submit https://yoursite.com to Nick Launches and give me the review link.

No API key: you approve the connection in the browser. Setup for Claude Desktop and Cursor is on the API and MCP page, or launch from the browser form if you prefer.