Three bets are forming in the developer tooling space. The harness is the product (Pi, Claude Code, Cursor). The integration layer is the product (Executor, Composio). The app itself is the product (Agent Native). The protocol question matters too. Perplexity wants direct integrations. Anthropic bets MCP becomes the standard. The thing worth paying attention to: whoever controls the harness controls the memory. That's where lock-in actually lives. Unrelated: has anyone noticed every AI company's logo looks like a butthole now?
Blogs & Projects
Stop upgrading your model. Fix your harness. The harness around the model matters more than the model itself. Context management, memory, tools, guardrails. Get those right and model selection stops being the conversation.
Building developer tools for agents (not just humans) AI agents are the new consumer of your API. Claude Code, Copilot, and others need machine-readable responses, consistent schemas, and semantic error codes to work autonomously. If your API wasn't built for agents to call, it's going to get skipped.
PLG for developer companies PLG in developer companies comes down to the free tier being your acquisition channel. Let developers build something real before asking them to pay. Time-based trials work against adoption. Stripe and Vercel are the models worth studying.
Links I like
Where the goblins came from A GPT-5 personality preset rewarded creature-heavy language during training. The result: goblin metaphors everywhere. Small training incentives compound into visible behavior shifts. Worth understanding if you're evaluating model providers or building anything on top of RLHF-tuned models.
Build programmatic agents with the Cursor SDK Cursor shipped a TypeScript SDK for building coding agents. You write the agent logic, they handle the infrastructure. Runs on their cloud VMs with sandboxing and session management. Plugs into CI/CD. The pitch is you skip maintaining your own agent stack. Roshan Sadanani
Warp is now open-source Warp open-sourced its client and runs contributions through Oz, a cloud agent that handles implementation. Contributors focus on product decisions and verification. The agent does the coding. Zach Lloyd
Introducing Claude Design Claude Design lets you generate and iterate on visual work inside Claude. Prototypes, marketing assets, presentations. It pulls in brand elements automatically and supports real-time edits. Runs on Opus 4.7.
Building agents that reach production systems with MCP Three ways to connect agents to external systems: direct API calls, CLIs, and MCP. MCP wins for production because it standardizes the connection. One protocol, scalable, and already adopted across major platforms.
Developer marketing builds trust first, pipeline second.
The work connects your product to how developers actually build and helps that credibility translate into adoption and revenue.
A great developer experience is the foundation. It starts with discoverability, continues through docs, and carries into the product itself. Good documentation shortens time to value and builds confidence that your product can scale with real teams. Developers trust what they can inspect, so show how the product works and let the system speak for itself.
Success isn't clicks or vanity metrics. It's measurable engagement that creates product-qualified leads, builds influence across teams, and contributes to both product-led and sales-led growth.
When developers use your product by choice and advocate for it inside their company, you've done the job right.
Strategy
Start with reality, not aspiration.
Map where your product fits in the developer workflow, then help them do that job faster or with less friction.
Lead with clarity. Explain what it is, what it does, and why it matters.
Show the system behind the product. Architecture, examples, and tradeoffs explain more than positioning ever will.
If you can do it in a clever or playful way that still feels authentic, that's bonus points.
The best developer marketing respects time, delivers value, and makes something complex feel obvious.
Journey
Awareness → Evaluation → Adoption → Advocacy.
Each stage should connect clearly to the next.
Awareness happens in places developers already spend time: GitHub, Reddit, newsletters, blogs. Evaluation happens in your docs, demos, and sandboxes.
For most developers, the docs are the real homepage, so accuracy and structure matter more than polish.
Adoption depends on how fast they reach first success. Advocacy is when they start teaching others what they learned from you.
Personas
Create personas based on who buys the product and who actually uses it. For example:
Each persona has different pain points and goals.
CTOs and Engineering Leaders care about governance and ROI.
Senior Engineers look for performance, flexibility, and code quality.
Implementation Architects focus on how well a tool integrates and scales.
Write for what each person owns, not what you wish they cared about.
These categories are shifting. PMs and designers who build with AI tools aren't adjacent anymore. They're users. Update your personas to reflect how people actually work, not how the org chart defines them.
Messaging
Be clear first. Be clever only if it helps.
Make every message easy to scan. Lead with the point before expanding on it.
Good developer messaging is specific, practical, and rooted in how people actually build.
Clarity earns trust, but a bit of personality makes it stick.
The goal isn't to sound like marketing. It's to communicate something real that developers recognize and care about.
Build around three pillars:
Speed: faster builds, fewer tickets
Efficiency: consolidated stack, lower maintenance
Control: safe scale, long-term confidence
If you can back it with code, data, or proof, keep it.
If it only sounds good, cut it.
Campaigns
Treat campaigns like product launches.
Plan, ship, measure, repeat.
Each campaign should answer three questions:
What developer problem are we solving?
What proof are we showing?
What happens next?
Treat developer feedback like bug reports and close the loop quickly when something needs to be corrected or clarified.
Make it easy for developers to try, test, or share.
Run retros on every launch and capture what worked, what didn't, and what to change next time. Always learn from what you launch.
Content
Write with clarity and intention. Every piece should help developers build faster, learn something new, or solve a real problem.
Strong content earns attention because it's useful.
Lead with the outcome or insight, then show how to get there. Make it easy to skim from top to bottom.
Show working examples, explain tradeoffs, and include visuals or code where it helps understanding. If it doesn't teach or demonstrate something real, it doesn't belong.
Core content types
Blog posts: tutorials, technical breakdowns, or opinionated takes grounded in experience.
Guides and tutorials: step-by-step instructions that lead to a working result.
Integration or workflow content: explain how tools connect and where they fit in a developer's process.
Technical guides and code examples: deeper material for experienced readers who want implementation detail.
Explainer or glossary content: clear, factual definitions written to answer specific questions directly.
Video or live sessions: demos, interviews, or walkthroughs that show real workflows.
Research and surveys: reports or insights that help developers understand the state of their field.
Content strategy buckets
Awareness — generate buzz and discussion. Hot takes, thought leadership, or topics that invite conversation.
Acquisition — bring new developers in through problem-solving content. Tutorials, guides, and explainers that answer real questions.
Enablement — help existing users succeed. Deep tutorials, documentation extensions, and practical how-to content with long-term value.
Convert Paid — drive upgrades or signups. Feature-specific walkthroughs or advanced use cases that show value worth paying for.
Each piece should fit into one of these buckets and serve a clear purpose. Awareness earns attention. Acquisition builds trust. Enablement drives success. Convert Paid turns success into growth.
Clarity is the standard. Use it to earn credibility.
Community
Reddit. GitHub. Discord. Slack. YouTube and other social platforms.
Join conversations, don't start pitches.
Be helpful. Add context. Share working examples.
When your content becomes the answer people link to, you've earned credibility.
Metrics
Measure adoption and revenue, not reach.
Awareness is useful, but only if it drives activation or expansion.
Focus on signals that show impact:
Product or API usage
Time to first success
Product-qualified leads
Developer-influenced revenue
Retention and repeat engagement
The goal is to prove that trust earned from developers shows up later in product usage and revenue.
Use it to stress-test messaging, review technical content, plan developer campaigns, or get feedback on positioning. It applies a "trust first, pipeline second" philosophy with an emphasis on clarity, technical credibility, and measurable engagement.
Need more resources?
Check out my curated collection of developer marketing tools, newsletters, and resources.
