Launch Day Runbook

Launch Day Runbook

A launch is won or lost in the first six hours, and almost every failure is operational, not strategic: the email went out before the Product Hunt page was live, nobody was awake when the ranking slipped, the founder spent the morning rewriting copy instead of replying to commenters. This skill is the war-room runbook - an hour-by-hour script with named owners, a monitoring loop, and pre-decided contingencies - so launch day is execution, not improvisation.

This is the execution companion. The strategy is already set upstream: [[launch-plan-sequencer]] owns the date and beat calendar, [[positioning-statement]] and [[messaging-hierarchy]] own the words, [[plg-motion-designer]] owns what happens after signup, and [[sales-enablement-kit]] arms the team for the inbound this creates. Do not re-litigate any of those today. Today you run the play.

When to use this skill

Reach for it once the date is locked and you are within 48 hours of launch, and keep it open during the day itself. If you are still choosing the date, ordering the beats, or deciding which channels to fire, stop and use [[launch-plan-sequencer]] first - a runbook for a plan that does not exist yet is theater.

The ordered workflow

Run these in order. Steps 1-3 happen the day before; 4-8 are the live day.

1. Freeze scope the day before. No new copy, no new features, no new channels after T-minus-24h. Lock the asset list: PH gallery + first comment, the [[messaging-hierarchy]] one-liner, the launch tweet/thread, the LinkedIn post, the email, the changelog entry, the landing page. Ship the [[landing-page-copy]] and pricing the night before, not at 6am.
2. Assign owners to every channel and every contingency. Each line in the runbook has exactly one name. The four roles that must be filled: Captain (calls audibles, owns the schedule), Comments (replies on PH/HN/social within minutes), Amplify (mobilizes the warm list and reshares), Ops (watches the site, signup flow, and metrics). One person can wear two hats; no line can be ownerless.
3. Pre-stage and pre-write everything. Draft the first PH comment, the HN text post, the thank-you replies, and the "we're #1" / "we slipped, push now" rally messages before the day. Schedule nothing that depends on the PH page being live (the email, the broad social) until a human confirms the page renders for a logged-out visitor.
4. Launch the anchor first, in sequence. The canonical order: PH goes live at 12:01am PT → founder first comment within 2 min → notify the warm inner circle (not a blast) → confirm page is publicly visible → THEN fire the email and broad social a few hours later when there's ranking momentum to point at. Hacker News (Show HN) is a separate, hands-off bet - submit it as its own plain post, never cross-post "please upvote" (that gets you flagged); let it live or die on the title and first comment.
5. Run the amplification waves, not one blast. Sequence outreach so momentum compounds instead of spiking and dying: inner circle → team & advisors → broad email → broad social → communities where you're a genuine member. Each wave links to the same anchor and references real traction ("#3 and climbing") rather than a generic "we launched."
6. Work the comments like it's the product. Reply to every PH/HN/social comment fast and human - the founder, not a brand voice. Comment velocity and maker engagement drive PH ranking more than raw vote count. Pull objection answers straight from [[sales-enablement-kit]]; never argue on HN, answer the technical question and move on.
7. Monitor on a fixed cadence, not vibes. Every 30 minutes the Captain reads the dashboard aloud (see the artifact below): rank, vote/comment velocity, signups, site health, top objection. Decisions are made off numbers, not the group chat mood.
8. Close the day deliberately. A final-hours push to the warm list, a thank-you comment, then stop - do not flog a dead post past midnight. Capture the numbers and the top three objections for tomorrow's follow-up and for [[plg-motion-designer]] to act on the signups you just earned.

Contingency table (decide these before, not during)

Quality bar

A runbook is ready to run only if all of these are true:

• Every channel and every contingency row has exactly one named owner - zero ownerless lines.
• The sequence has an explicit anchor-first order with a human gate: the email and broad social literally cannot fire until someone confirms the PH page renders logged-out.
• All copy and assets are frozen and pre-written at T-24h; nothing creative is authored on launch morning.
• There is a fixed monitoring cadence (e.g. every 30 min) with a named metric set, not "keep an eye on it."
• Hacker News is treated as a hands-off, no-vote-begging bet, separate from the orchestrated PH push.
• The day has a defined end and a handoff: numbers captured, top objections logged, signups routed to [[plg-motion-designer]].

Do NOT

• Do NOT blast the email and broad social before the PH page is confirmed live and publicly visible - the #1 launch-day own-goal.
• Do NOT ask for upvotes anywhere, ever (PH and HN both penalize it). Ask people to "check it out," never to vote.
• Do NOT cross-post the same "we launched 🚀" blast identically to every channel - sequence waves that reference live traction instead.
• Do NOT write or rewrite positioning, pricing, or landing copy on launch morning. That work belongs to [[positioning-statement]] and [[landing-page-copy]], finished the night before.
• Do NOT run the day on vibes from the group chat - run it on the 30-minute dashboard read.
• Do NOT let it bleed past a defined end. A tired team flogging a dead post at 1am converts no one and wrecks tomorrow.

Runnable artifact - launch-day timeline generator

Feed it your launch date (PT) and it prints the hour-by-hour runbook with owners and the sequenced waves. Self-contained, standard library only.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""launch_runbook.py - generate an hour-by-hour launch-day runbook.

Usage: python launch_runbook.py 2026-07-15
"""
import sys
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

# (offset_minutes_from_PH_go_live, owner, action). PH goes live 12:01am PT.
TIMELINE = [
    (0,    "Captain",  "Product Hunt post goes LIVE (12:01am PT). Confirm it renders logged-out."),
    (2,    "Captain",  "Founder posts the first comment (pre-written: story + ask to 'check it out')."),
    (10,   "Amplify",  "Notify INNER CIRCLE only (DMs) - no mass blast yet."),
    (30,   "Comments", "Reply to every early comment, human voice, < 5 min each."),
    (180,  "Captain",  "Confirm ranking momentum, THEN green-light email + broad social."),
    (185,  "Ops",      "Fire the launch EMAIL to the broad list (links to PH anchor)."),
    (200,  "Amplify",  "Wave 2: team + advisors reshare the launch thread."),
    (240,  "Captain",  "Submit Show HN as its OWN post. Hands off after - no vote-begging."),
    (300,  "Amplify",  "Wave 3: broad social (Twitter/X thread, LinkedIn) referencing live rank."),
    (420,  "Amplify",  "Wave 4: communities where you're a real member."),
    (720,  "Captain",  "Midday checkpoint: read dashboard, decide if an early wave is needed."),
    (1140, "Amplify",  "Final-hours push to warm list ('last few hours to back us')."),
    (1320, "Captain",  "Thank-you comment. STOP. Capture numbers + top 3 objections. Hand to plg-motion-designer."),
]

MONITOR_EVERY_MIN = 30
METRICS = ["rank", "vote velocity", "comment velocity", "signups", "site health", "top objection"]

def main():
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        sys.exit("usage: python launch_runbook.py YYYY-MM-DD")
    day = datetime.strptime(sys.argv[1], "%Y-%m-%d")
    go_live = day.replace(hour=0, minute=1)  # 12:01am PT

    print(f"LAUNCH DAY RUNBOOK - {day:%A %b %d, %Y} (all times PT)\n")
    print("SEQUENCE (anchor-first; email/social gated on confirmed PH page):")
    for off, owner, action in TIMELINE:
        t = go_live + timedelta(minutes=off)
        print(f"  {t:%I:%M%p}  [{owner:<8}] {action}")

    print(f"\nMONITORING LOOP - Captain reads aloud every {MONITOR_EVERY_MIN} min:")
    print("  " + "  |  ".join(METRICS))
    print("\nReminder: never ask for upvotes. Ask people to 'check it out'.")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Worked example - python launch_runbook.py 2026-07-15:

LAUNCH DAY RUNBOOK - Wednesday Jul 15, 2026 (all times PT)

SEQUENCE (anchor-first; email/social gated on confirmed PH page):
  12:01AM  [Captain ] Product Hunt post goes LIVE (12:01am PT). Confirm it renders logged-out.
  12:03AM  [Captain ] Founder posts the first comment (pre-written: story + ask to 'check it out').
  12:11AM  [Amplify ] Notify INNER CIRCLE only (DMs) - no mass blast yet.
  12:31AM  [Comments] Reply to every early comment, human voice, < 5 min each.
  03:01AM  [Captain ] Confirm ranking momentum, THEN green-light email + broad social.
  03:06AM  [Ops     ] Fire the launch EMAIL to the broad list (links to PH anchor).
  03:21AM  [Amplify ] Wave 2: team + advisors reshare the launch thread.
  04:01AM  [Captain ] Submit Show HN as its OWN post. Hands off after - no vote-begging.
  05:01AM  [Amplify ] Wave 3: broad social (Twitter/X thread, LinkedIn) referencing live rank.
  07:01AM  [Amplify ] Wave 4: communities where you're a real member.
  12:01PM  [Captain ] Midday checkpoint: read dashboard, decide if an early wave is needed.
  07:01PM  [Amplify ] Final-hours push to warm list ('last few hours to back us').
  10:01PM  [Captain ] Thank-you comment. STOP. Capture numbers + top 3 objections. Hand to plg-motion-designer.

MONITORING LOOP - Captain reads aloud every 30 min:
  rank  |  vote velocity  |  comment velocity  |  signups  |  site health  |  top objection

Reminder: never ask for upvotes. Ask people to 'check it out'.

Tune the offsets to your audience's timezone and the channels you actually run, but keep the invariants: anchor first, human-gated email, waves not blasts, a fixed monitoring loop, and a hard stop with a handoff.

Deliverable

A filled-in launch-day runbook: the sequenced hour-by-hour timeline with one named owner per line, the four-role assignment (Captain / Comments / Amplify / Ops), the pre-written asset list frozen at T-24h, the contingency table with owners, the 30-minute monitoring cadence and metric set, and the end-of-day handoff (numbers + top objections routed to [[plg-motion-designer]] and [[sales-enablement-kit]]).