How to launch an open-source product on Show HN and Product Hunt
Two launches a week apart, for audiences that want opposite things. Readiness gates, timing, first-comment structure, and the week calendar.
Read the guide, then turn it into a concrete plan for your brand.
Launching an open-source product is not one launch. It is two, staged a week or two apart, aimed at audiences that want opposite things: Hacker News wants the architecture and the honest caveats, Product Hunt wants the outcome and the screenshots. This is the operating playbook — gates, timing, copy structure, and what to measure.
Do not launch until the gate closes
Pick one end-to-end walkthrough that represents the product actually working — install, first meaningful action, visible result — and make passing it the precondition for scheduling anything. A launch that sends traffic to a broken quick start converts curiosity into a permanent negative impression, and you only get the attention once.
Once that gate is green:
- Schedule Show HN for the first Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday morning in your primary audience's time zone.
- Schedule Product Hunt 8–14 days later, starting at 12:01am Pacific.
- Freeze copy and gallery assets 48 hours before each submission.
- Keep a human online for the first two hours after each.
Readiness checklist
Every row needs public evidence, not an assurance.
| Area | Required outcome |
|---|---|
| README | Explains the product, quick start, architecture, links, license, and contribution path. |
| Demo media | A GIF or screenshots showing the core loop end to end, not a static hero image. |
| Architecture overview | Public docs describe the boundaries between the open core and anything commercial. |
| Quick start | A clean-clone install has actually been run, by someone who is not you if possible. |
| Screenshots | Current UI, never mockups. Reviewers notice. |
| CONTRIBUTING | Branch policy, checks, and PR expectations are public. |
| Issue templates | Bug and feature reports guide contributors without exposing private process. |
| Analytics | Attribution is wired before traffic arrives, not during. |
Ground rules
- Keep submissions factual. No unannounced roadmap commitments, no customer names you have not cleared, no internal pricing.
- Never automate Hacker News posting, comments, replies, or voting. Draft copy with whatever tools you like; the posting and the conversation stay human. This is both a site rule and the difference between a launch and a ban.
- Redact secrets, customer data, billing identifiers, and private analytics from every screenshot.
Attribution
Use one campaign name across every channel so the cohort is comparable:
utm_campaign=oss_launch| Channel | Source | Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Show HN submission | hacker_news | show_hn |
| Show HN first comment | hacker_news | comment |
| Product Hunt link | product_hunt | launch |
| Maker comment | product_hunt | comment |
| Launch article | devto | article |
| X thread | x | social |
| LinkedIn post | social |
Track stars from baseline to T+24h, T+72h, and T+7d; signups carrying launch UTMs; activation within the launch cohort; and self-hosting signals such as quick-start page views, image pulls, and issues opened by new visitors.
Show HN
The submission
Link the public repository or public docs. Never a staging URL. Keep the title plain and descriptive — Hacker News titles that try to sell get flagged, and titles that just say what the thing is do fine.
Show HN: [Product] - [what it is in five words]The first comment
Post it yourself, immediately, and structure it in four parts:
- What you built and why, in two sentences.
- What is actually in the repo — concrete capabilities, not adjectives.
- How it runs: the self-hosting path, the dependencies, and where any commercial boundary sits. Be explicit about the licence split; ambiguity here is the fastest route to a hostile thread.
- What feedback you want. Naming a specific question gets you specific answers.
Prepared answers
Have short, factual replies ready for: can I self-host it, do I need a cloud account, what is the licence, how do I contribute, and how does it compare to the obvious incumbent. Answer the comparison question honestly — including where you lose — because the thread will find out either way and being first is worth more than being flattering.
Product Hunt
Run it one to two weeks after Show HN. The delay lets you fold in HN feedback, refresh screenshots, and avoid splitting the conversation across two audiences on the same day.
Product page
Write four tagline candidates and pick the one that would make sense to someone who has never heard of the category. Keep the short description to two sentences: what it is, and how you run it.
Maker comment
Different audience, different register from HN. Lead with the problem you personally had, describe the loop your product closes, and end by asking for feedback from the specific kind of user you want.
Gallery
| Asset | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Hero image | Explain the category in one frame, using real UI. |
| Core workflow | Show the main loop with readable labels. |
| Fast win | Show the thing that takes ten seconds and feels good. |
| Planning surface | Show the product in use over time, with demo data. |
| Integrations | Show what it connects to, no private handles. |
| Self-hosting proof | Terminal or architecture, free of secrets. |
Launch-day schedule
| Time | Action |
|---|---|
| T-48h | Freeze copy, screenshots, and links. |
| T-24h | Confirm the product page, maker access, gallery, and UTM links. |
| 12:01am PT | Launch. |
| First 2h | Reply to everything. Ship doc fixes live. Write down every objection. |
| First 24h | Publish the technical article and owned-channel posts. |
| T+24h | Record traffic, stars, signups, activation, self-hosting signals. |
| T+7d | Publish the retrospective and link the follow-up issues. |
Launch-week content calendar
| Day | Channel | Content |
|---|---|---|
| D-7 | Blog | Why the project is open source and self-hostable. |
| D-5 | X | Build-in-public thread with a quick-start GIF. |
| D-3 | Founder and use-case post. | |
| D-1 | GitHub | README, screenshots, and issue templates frozen. |
| D0 | Hacker News | Show HN submission and first comment. |
| D+1 | Technical blog | Architecture and setup walkthrough. |
| D+3 | X and LinkedIn | What the HN feedback changed. |
| D+8 to D+14 | Product Hunt | Launch page and maker comment. |
| D+15 | Blog | Public retrospective with results and next steps. |
Measure against a baseline
Record stars, forks, signups, activated users, image pulls, and quick-start views before the first submission. Without a baseline every post-launch number is unreadable. Define activation concretely — a launch-cohort user who completes the product's first real action — and treat it as the only number that predicts anything about week four.
Final pre-submit checklist
- The end-to-end walkthrough gate is green and linked.
- README, screenshots, architecture docs, CONTRIBUTING, and issue templates have public review evidence.
- A clean-clone install has been run and the transcript is saved.
- Show HN title and first comment are written and reviewed.
- Product Hunt tagline, maker comment, and gallery are reviewed.
- UTM links and analytics views are confirmed working.
- Launch-week posts are drafted and scheduled.
- Baseline metrics are recorded.
The playbook is deliberately boring. Launches fail on unglamorous things — a broken install command, an unanswered licence question, no attribution on the one day traffic actually arrives — far more often than on positioning.