A Product Hunt launch that lands in the top 5 of the day
A Product Hunt launch that lands in the top 5 of the day, drives 500-2000 signups, and seeds a launch-day press cycle you can repurpose for the next 6 months.
Run12 steps2-3 weeks of prep, 24 hours live, 1 week post-mortem
Launch on Product Hunt the right way
A Product Hunt launch that lands in the top 5 of the day, drives 500-2000 signups, and seeds a launch-day press cycle you can repurpose for the next 6 months.
Steps
Assets
Product Hunt launch plan
Hunt log
+2 moreTitleStatusOwner
Pick the launch date and the day-of slotshippedYou
Pick a hunter (or self-hunt)activeAgent
Write the tagline, description, and topic tagsqueuedYou
Build the gallery: video, GIFs, and screenshotsdraftedAgent
…
Public preview of the cloned workspace. Same chrome you'll see after Open in Dock.
Spin up an agent for the heavy lifting
Drafting agent (yours): drafts the tagline, description, gallery captions, and the maker comment from the product brief. Drafts the launch retro 48 hours after the hunt closes.
12 steps, 14 official links, 5 agent prompts
Every external doc the agent needs to cite is pre-loaded into the workspace's Pointers table. No hunting for the right URL mid-draft.
What's inside
Pre-loaded so day one is execution.
6Surfaces
12Steps
5Agent prompts
14Official links
6Tools mapped
Surfaces
- tableSteps
- tableAssets
- docProduct Hunt launch plan
- tableHunt log
- docLaunch retro
- docStatus
How the loop works
Your agent works. Dock shows you what happened.
Open this template and you get a workspace seeded with an agent prompt. Connect your agent — Claude via our MCP, Cursor, your own setup — and it reads, drafts, and posts updates as it goes. You watch Dock for the latest.
- 01
Connect your agent
Claim an agent invite at trydock.ai/agent-invites — your agent gets an API key scoped to this workspace. Paste the key into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client.
- 02
Your agent reads the workspace
The agent prompt at the top of the workspace tells your agent its role, the cadence to follow, and the surfaces to update. No extra setup — open Dock and your agent already knows what to do.
- 03
Watch Dock for the latest
Your agent posts to the Status surface after every meaningful action — newest at top. Wire the workspace's webhooks to Slack or email to get pinged in real time.
Wire it up · Claude Desktop
Add Dock as an MCP server in 30 seconds.
{
"mcpServers": {
"dock": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@trydock/mcp"],
"env": {
"DOCK_API_KEY": "<paste from /agent-invites>"
}
}
}
}Drop into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or the equivalent on Windows / Linux. Restart Claude Desktop. Ask Claude:“Read trydock.ai/<org>/launch-on-product-hunt and follow the agent prompt.”
FAQ
Common questions on this template.
What rank do I need on Product Hunt to call it a successful launch?
Top 5 of the day is the rank that converts to lasting attention: badges, leaderboard email, press pickup. Top 10 is solid. Outside top 10 means you'll get the traffic from your own distribution but Product Hunt itself won't compound it. Don't measure success by rank alone, though: 800 signups at rank 8 is a better launch than 200 signups at rank 1.
Do I need a hunter, or can I self-hunt?
Self-hunting is fine in 2026. The algorithm doesn't materially favour hunter notoriety the way it did pre-2020. A hunter helps if their audience overlaps your buyer; a hunter with no overlap is decoration. The single best version is: self-hunt if you have your own warm Product Hunt account, get a relevant hunter only if they actually use your category of product.
Can I ask my friends and customers to upvote?
You can notify them of the launch; you cannot ask for upvotes. The line: 'we launched on Product Hunt today, here's the link' is allowed. 'Please support our launch by upvoting' is forbidden by the community guidelines and gets reports. The notification version drives just as many real upvotes from people who would have voted anyway, plus zero risk of penalty.
What time should I launch?
12:01am Pacific. Product Hunt resets at midnight Pacific, and the rank you achieve in the first 4 hours sets your trajectory for the day. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday slots are the highest-engaged. Weekend launches get less competition but also less traffic.
Can my AI agents help with the Product Hunt launch?
Yes. Agents are particularly useful for: drafting taglines + descriptions from your product brief, drafting the maker comment, drafting the multi-platform launch threads, building the press pitch list for the post-launch cycle, and tracking the launch log in real time. Posting on Product Hunt itself should stay human-attributed: drafts go in the Brief, the maker pastes them.
What does it cost to launch on Product Hunt?
Product Hunt itself is free. The associated tools (scheduler, analytics, email) typically run $30-50/mo if you don't have them already. The biggest cost is the team-time: 2-3 weeks of prep + the 24-hour launch day + 1 week of follow-up.
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Teams that run this template, with their full setup.
MarketingUse case
Campaigns that ship + the metrics next to them.
Campaigns table, briefs per campaign, performance data on the same row. Agents draft briefs, pull performance numbers, surface what's resonating so the calendar can adjust.
Open the use case
FoundersUse case
The board you wish you had.
Investor pipeline, fundraise narrative, board prep: all in one workspace. Agents draft updates from KPI rows, summarize founder updates, surface follow-up patterns.
Open the use case
Open it. Hand it to your agent. Ship.
One click mints a fresh workspace in your org with the template body seeded. Your agents, your team, your edits from there.
About this template
Curated by the Dock team at Vector Apps Inc. Every template is a real shared workspace we run with our own agents before publishing.
Reviewed regularly by the Dock team. Each playbook step links to the upstream tool's official docs so we can re-verify the rules as platforms change.