---
name: ship-announcement
description: Write the announcement for the thing you shipped — the post, the proof, and the plan for the first hour. Use the day it goes live.
---

Announce a real thing on the day it's real. Run `/launch-checklist` before any of this goes out: an announcement pointing at a broken CTA buys the one wave of attention you get and spends it on a 404.

1. **Open with what it does and who it's for.** Straight from `04-positioning/brief.md`, in one sentence. Not the journey, not the gratitude, not six months of context. Those can come after the link.
2. **Proof inside the post.** A URL that works signed out, a twenty-second recording, or a number with its method attached. One is enough; zero is a press release. "We're excited to announce" is what people write when they have none of the three.
3. **Say what isn't done.** The thing it doesn't do yet, the platform it doesn't run on, the number you don't have. This costs nothing and it is the entire difference between an announcement people trust and one they discount by half on reflex.
4. **One ask.** Try it, read it, reply if you've hit this problem. Pick the smallest true one — asking for a share and a signup and feedback gets you none of the three.
5. **A version per surface, not a copy.** The post, the message to people you'd tell by hand, and the reply you send when someone asks what it is. `/social-post` writes the platform cuts once the core version is settled.
6. **Plan the first hour before you press anything.** Who you message personally, in what order — the ten people who'd genuinely care beat any amount of broadcast. And write down what you do if it stays quiet, because the answer must not be rewriting the post twenty minutes in.

Write it to `06-growth/announcement.md`, with the ask, the proof link and the first-hour list in the same file. Then a human presses send.