The short answer
Before you post anywhere, make the product easy to try and easy to understand: a public pricing page, a clear one-line description, a share image and a page that loads for crawlers. Then follow each channel's own rules. Product Hunt and Hacker News both forbid asking for upvotes, Hacker News wants something people can try without signing up, and X caches share images by URL. Finally, list the product in directories with complete, accurate details.
| Channel | Rule to know | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Product Hunt | Tagline up to 60 characters; launch at 12:01 a.m. Pacific for a full day; ask for feedback, not upvotes | Product Hunt launch guide |
| Hacker News (Show HN) | Only for something people can try; no landing pages or signup-only pages; do not ask friends to upvote or comment | Show HN guidelines |
| X | Share cards are cached; change the image URL, or share a fresh page URL, when you update the image | Our own experience |
| SOTA | Free listing reviewed by people; include what it does, who it is for, pricing and limits | SOTA submission page |
Before launch day
Make the product easy to try. Hacker News asks for things people can use 'ideally without barriers such as signups or emails', and every channel converts better when the first click shows the product working.
Publish a pricing page that loads without logging in, even if the answer is 'free during beta'. In our pricing study, only 117 of 199 catalog products had a /pricing page we could read.
Write one sentence that says what the product does and for whom, and use it everywhere: your homepage title and description, your Product Hunt tagline and your directory listings. Consistent wording helps people, search engines and AI assistants connect the mentions.
Check the page that will be shared: a share image, a title and description, and content that appears before JavaScript runs. Our guides on SEO basics and on getting found by AI assistants cover what to check.
Product Hunt
Product Hunt's launch guide recommends launching at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time to get the full 24 hours, a tagline of at most 60 characters with no gimmicks, and a square thumbnail around 240 by 240 pixels.
Post a first comment as the maker: Product Hunt reports that 70% of products that reached Product of the Day, Week or Month had one. Share your launch anywhere, but ask people for feedback, not upvotes.
Hacker News: Show HN
Show HN is for something you made that people can try. Blog posts, landing pages, sign-up pages and fundraisers are off-topic, and you should be around to answer questions in the thread.
Asking friends to upvote or comment is against the rules. Write a plain title that starts with 'Show HN:', explain what is new and how it works in a first comment, and expect direct technical feedback.
Directories, including SOTA
Directories bring steady discovery after launch day. Give each one the same core facts: what the product does, who it is for, pricing and known limits. Listings with honest limitations are more useful, and more likely to be trusted, than slogans.
SOTA reviews every submission before publishing it. You can submit through the form, or let an AI agent draft the listing from your website with the SOTA agent skill.
After launch: what we see go wrong
While listing 199 AI products in 2026, we met many renames and moves, and some old domains stopped working without redirecting. If you rename, redirect every old URL permanently and keep the old name on your site for a while.
Keep facts current. Free-plan limits and prices change often, and outdated details in directories and AI answers outlive the change. A public changelog and a dated pricing page make updates easy to pick up.
Sources & method
Official documentation was checked on 2026-10-02. Selection advice is our assessment. Interfaces and requirements may change; check the linked source for the version you intend to use.
- Product Hunt: Preparing for launch
- Hacker News: Show HN guidelines
- SOTA: Submit a product
- SOTA agent skill
- SEO basics for a new AI product site (SOTA guide)
- How to get your AI product found by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity (SOTA guide)
How SOTA reviews projects · Suggest a correction · Download the evaluation checklist
