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Aromba — Growth Playbook

Step-by-step, free channels only, with numbers. Every number is an estimate (est.) from typical dev-tool funnels, not data; replace with real ones after the first two weeks using the ?src= tracking in section 2. Paid marketing only after section 12 triggers.

No quiet start. Launch week fires every free channel at once, because the built-in loops (section 4) only start working once there are enough users to share. Phase 3 is a second wave with the assistant.

Target: 1,000 paired installs by the end of launch week’s second Monday, then 1,000 more from phase 3. Section 10 shows how the channels add up in worst / normal / best cases.

1. How the funnel converts (est.)

Used in every channel estimate below:

“Installs” below means paired installs.

2. Setup before any posting (one day)

Accounts — create now, age them

Tracking

• Install command accepts a source: curl -fsSL "https://aro.mba/install?src=hn" | sh. The install script sends src to the relay once at pairing. Sources: x, hn, askhn, reddit-<sub>, gh, awesome, yt-<creator>, nl-<name>, ph, habr, tg-<channel>, devto, share-report, share-card, share-scene, chore-link, invite.
• Relay dashboard for us: installs by src by day; paired rate; D7; seats; locks.
• GitHub → Insights → Traffic: referrers and clones, weekly screenshot.

Assets (content bank)

1. 20-second screen recording: terminal command → Telegram report. Export as MP4 and GIF (under 5 MB for README).
2. Six report screenshots on real servers: clean, messy, broken, empty, prod mode, after a fix. Names blurred.
3. The Warden diagram: one image, Worker vs Warden, cage, ladder.
4. Three Space snapshots.
5. One-paragraph description (60 words) and one-line description (12 words) for every submission form.
6. README (section 3A).

3. Channel playbooks

Each: steps → timing → time cost → numbers (est.) as installs: worst / normal / best.

3A. GitHub (always on)

Steps:

1. README order: one line → install command in a code block → GIF → three “never” lines (never deletes user data / never executes without a tap / never sends file contents) → 6-line security summary with link to SECURITY.md → what it does → how to write a chore → roadmap link.
2. Topics: server-monitoring, devops, sysadmin, vps, telegram-bot, ai-agent, self-hosted, claude-code, linux, go.
3. Releases with notes written for users and one screenshot each; tag every phase.
4. Issues labeled good first chore from day one (5 ready); CONTRIBUTING.md with a 10-line chore example.
5. Discussions categories: “Show your first report”, “Chore requests”, “Q&A”.
6. Awesome-list PRs (each list has a CONTRIBUTING file; follow it exactly, one PR each, at phase 2): awesome-selfhosted, awesome-sysadmin, awesome-devops, awesome-claude-code, awesome-telegram-bots, awesome-go.
7. Trending: GitHub Trending is driven by stars in a 24-hour window; stack Show HN, the X thread and creator videos on the same day (section 3C).

Time: README half a day; ongoing 1 hour a week. Numbers by end of phase 3, organic GitHub only (search, trending, awesome lists): 20 / 150 / 600 installs; stars 100 / 800 / 4,000.

3B. X / Twitter (main, daily)

Steps:

1. Personal account posts the story; product account posts artifacts. Pin the install video on both.
2. Daily during launch weeks, 3×/week otherwise. One artifact per post: a report screenshot, a weekly card, a data point, a scene.
3. Launch threads (template in section 9): phase 1 story thread, phase 2 data thread, phase 3 main thread.
4. Reply strategy: 20 minutes a day; search “deployed my first”, “VPS full”, “server hacked”, “Claude Code deploy”, “Cursor deploy”; answer the actual question; mention Aromba only when it would have solved it.
5. Ask the first 20 users to post their report with the image card; repost every one.

Time: 30 minutes a day. Numbers (personal account ~500–2,000 followers): per launch thread 3k / 15k / 150k views → 5 / 40 / 400 installs; daily posting and replies over 6 weeks: 20 / 120 / 500. X total by end of phase 3: 30 / 250 / 1,500.

3C. Show HN (launch week, day 1)

Steps:

1. Account aged per section 2.
2. Submit at news.ycombinator.com/submit, Tuesday–Thursday, 7–9 am US Eastern (15:00–17:00 Dubai). URL: the GitHub repo (more trust than a landing page). Title for launch week (phase 1, scan only): Show HN: Aromba – one command, and your VPS reports to Telegram what's wrong with it. Under 80 characters, no marketing words. A second Show HN is acceptable months later for a major new version — that is phase 3, with the assistant, titled around the Warden.
3. First comment immediately (template in section 9): what it is, what it can’t do, Warden in three lines, link to SECURITY.md, what’s not built.
4. Stay 12 hours. Answer every comment within 15 minutes, especially the hostile ones; concede real points; never ask for votes anywhere.
5. If it gets under 5 points in 3 hours, HN allows one repost of a Show HN that got no attention after about a week — do it once, different day and hour.
6. Skip the Ask HN; there’s no time. Collect vocabulary from the launch thread instead.

Time: one full day plus the Ask HN hour. Numbers: worst (never leaves /new): 10 points, 300 clicks, 15 installs; normal (front page 4–8 hours): 150 points, 6k clicks, 350 installs; best (top 3 for a day): 500+ points, 25k clicks, 1,200 installs. Front-page odds for a well-prepared security-angle Show HN: roughly one in three (est.).

3D. Reddit (launch week: every sub that allows a new account; the rest from phase 2)

Steps:

1. Read each sub’s rules; several ban “self-promotion” unless you’re an active member and the post is about the problem.
2. Post as a person, with a screenshot, not a link post. Different text per sub (templates in section 9). Sub → angle: r/selfhosted (self-hosted relay, no cloud), r/devops (the Warden and the cage), r/webdev and r/node (disk full after deploys), r/ClaudeAI and r/vibecoding (“who watches your server after Claude Code deploys it”), r/linuxadmin (SECURITY.md first, expect hard questions), r/sideproject and r/indiehackers (the founder story and the $1 seat).
3. Post 14:00–17:00 US Eastern, Tuesday–Thursday. Answer every comment for 6 hours.
4. Launch week is the exception to one-sub-a-week: post in 3–4 permissive subs across the week, different text each, one per day. After that, one sub a week.

Time: 2 hours per post. Numbers per post: 300 views / 3 installs (removed or ignored) — 8k views / 50 installs — 80k views / 400 installs. Eight subs over phases 2–3: 15 / 250 / 1,200. Expect two of eight posts to be removed.

3E. Creators (DMs today; videos in launch week and again at phase 3)

Steps:

1. Find: YouTube search “built with Claude Code”, “deploy to VPS”, “vibe coding deploy”, “Cursor to production”; X search the same. Target channels with 5k–100k subscribers and a video in the last month. Make a list of 20.
2. DM template in section 9. Offer: access now (the scan works), a ?src=yt-<name> link, a code that reserves 50 founder seats for their viewers. No payment, no script, ask for honesty.
3. Send 30 DMs today; expect 5–8 replies, 2–3 videos in launch week and 3–5 more at phase 3 when there’s more to show.
4. Give them the asset pack and a 15-minute call if they want.
5. Repost every video the day it’s out.

Time: 4 hours to find and DM, 2 hours support. Numbers per video: 500 views / 5 installs — 6k views / 80 installs — 60k views / 700 installs. Five videos: 20 / 350 / 2,000. This is the highest-variance channel and the one most worth the effort for vibe coders.

3F. Newsletters and directories (launch week, day 1; resubmit at phase 3)

Steps: each has a submit page; find it on their site, submit the one-paragraph description, the GIF link, and the repo. One submission each: TLDR, Console.dev, Changelog News, Bytes, Node Weekly, DevOps Weekly, Self-Hosted Weekly, Hacker Newsletter (picks from HN automatically), Golang Weekly. Directories: AlternativeTo, SaaSHub, OpenAlternative, Awesome Open Source, LibHunt. Time: 3 hours total. Numbers: newsletters accept maybe 1 in 4 (est.); one inclusion in a large newsletter: 300–1,500 clicks → 30–150 installs. Across all: 10 / 120 / 500. Directories: slow trickle, 5–30 a month.

3G. Technical articles (first one in launch week, then one a month)

Steps: write on aro.mba/blog; cross-post to dev.to and Hashnode with canonical URL; submit each to HN as a normal link (not Show HN) and to one relevant sub. Topics in order: “What one command found on my VPS” (launch week, short, the six screenshots); “touches is a cage, not a comment”; “Why our AI can’t execute”; “What we found on 1,000 servers” (the data post — this one travels furthest). Time: one day per article. Numbers per article: 500 reads / 5 installs — 5k / 60 — 40k / 500. Three articles by phase 3: 15 / 150 / 800. The data post alone can outperform the launch if the number is striking.

3H. Communities (Discord / Telegram)

Steps: join Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, Replit servers and 3–5 vibe-coding Telegram channels (English and Russian); a week of answering server questions before any mention; post only in show-your-work channels, with the screenshot; ask admins before posting where rules are unclear. Time: 20 minutes a day. Numbers over 6 weeks: 10 / 60 / 250.

3I. Product Hunt (launch week, day 4; relaunch at phase 3 as a major update)

Steps: create the listing a week ahead (tagline under 60 characters, 4 images, the video, first comment as maker); launch at 00:01 Pacific (11:01 Dubai) on a Tuesday or Wednesday; post the link on X and in the Telegram group at 00:05; answer every comment for 12 hours; no vote-asking messages to strangers. Time: one day. Numbers: 30 / 150 / 600 installs; the listing keeps sending 5–20 a week afterwards.

3J. Russian-speaking (launch week)

Steps: Habr — full technical article (Warden, cage) into the sandbox, then moderation; Telegram channels on vibe coding and DevOps — DM admins with the screenshot and ask for a mention (many post free tools for free); vc.ru — the founder story. Each with its own ?src=. Time: one day for the Habr article, 2 hours for outreach. Numbers: Habr front page 20 / 150 / 500; Telegram channels 10 / 80 / 300.

4. Mechanics built into the product — with numbers (est.)

Assumed share rates once the buttons exist:

Effect: a viral factor around 0.15–0.25 (est.) — not self-sustaining, but every 1,000 users bring 150–250 more for free, forever. This is what turns launch spikes into a slope.

5. Founders as the engine

• Seats-left counter on the site header and in the bot’s first offer: “612 founder seats left.”
• Founder Telegram group with early builds; their feedback is the changelog.
• Every launch post ends with a real number: “N founders locked the price this week.”
• Invite link inside the seat (section 4).

6. Calendar

Day −7 to −1 — prep (this week)

Launch week — everything at once

Installs by day 8 (est.): 150 / 900 / 3,500.

Weeks 2–4 — keep the slope

One Reddit sub a week (the age-limited ones now allowed), article 2, first good first chore PRs credited, weekly cards and shares reposted daily, phase 2 changelog with the first aggregate number. Cumulative end of week 4: 250 / 1,500 / 5,500.

Phase 3 — second wave, one day

Same shape as launch week, one day: second Show HN (major version, Warden title), main X thread, creator round two, Product Hunt relaunch, newsletter resubmissions, article 3 submitted as a link. Cumulative after: 400 / 2,500 / 9,000.

After — weekly rhythm

One small show a week (chore, scene, user story, data point); one article a month; reply strategy daily. Expected steady state: +40 / +150 / +400 a week including loops.

7. Weekly routine (hours)

Launch weeks: double.

8. Metrics review (every Monday, 30 minutes)

1. Relay: installs by src, paired rate, D7, D30, seats, locks — last 7 days vs previous.
2. Which src beat its “normal” estimate? Do more of it this week. Which fell below “worst”? Drop it.
3. Share rates per loop; if a loop is under half its estimate, fix the button placement, not the incentive.
4. Update this document’s numbers with real ones once a month.

9. Templates

X launch thread (phase 3)

1. “Your server deployed itself with Claude Code. Who’s watching it now? Nobody. [video]”
2. “Aromba: one command, and a caretaker moves in. Cleans junk, watches disk and logins, backs up, reports in Telegram every morning.”
3. “It has an AI. The AI can’t execute anything. A separate guard holds all the power; the AI only proposes; you tap. [Warden diagram]”
4. “On the first N servers it found X TB of junk and Y brute-force attempts nobody knew about. [report screenshot]”
5. “Open source, one server free forever, relay self-hostable. Install: curl -fsSL https://aro.mba/install?src=x | sh”
6. “First 1,000 users get a founder seat. N left.”

Show HN first comment

“Hi HN, I built Aromba because I kept deploying things with Claude Code and then forgetting the server existed until the disk filled up. It’s a daemon that runs small maintenance scripts (‘chores’), reports to one Telegram chat, and has an assistant. The assistant cannot execute anything: a separate root-owned Warden process holds all privileges, every chore runs in a namespace where only its declared paths are writable, and there are honeypot files that lock the whole thing down if anything reads them. Security doc: [link]. Not built yet: [honest list]. I’d like to hear where you think the model breaks.”

Reddit (r/selfhosted example)

Title: “I made a caretaker daemon for my VPS that reports to Telegram — relay is self-hostable, AI can’t execute anything”. Body: the problem in two lines, the screenshot, what it does, the security model in four lines, the self-hosted relay command, the repo link, “happy to answer anything”. No install command in the body if the sub forbids promotion; the repo is enough.

Creator DM

“Hi [name] — watched your [video]. I built a small open-source tool for exactly the moment after that video ends: a caretaker for the VPS you just deployed to. One command, reports in Telegram, AI that can propose but can’t execute. Launching [date]; I’d love to give you access a week early, no strings, no script — say whatever you think. I can also reserve 50 founder seats for your viewers. Repo: [link].”

Newsletter blurb (60 words)

“Aromba is an open-source caretaker for servers. One command installs a daemon that cleans junk, watches disk, logins and services, backs up databases, and reports to a Telegram chat every morning. Its AI assistant can diagnose and propose fixes but can never execute: a separate guard process holds all privileges. One server free forever; relay self-hostable.”

10. How it adds up (cumulative, after the phase 3 wave) (est.)

The worst column assumes every channel flops at once, which doesn’t happen; the best assumes several go viral together. Plan on the normal column. The point of firing everything in week one: the loops in section 4 need a few hundred users before they contribute anything, and every week of delay is a week they sit idle. Funnel after: normal case → ~1,400 D7 actives → ~140 founder seats → ~35 locked discounts.

11. What we don’t do

Paid ads before section 12. Product Hunt on the same day as Show HN (three days apart). Cold email. Vote rings or DM-begging. Trashing other tools by name. Any mention of crypto in Aromba’s channels; the founder seat is “$1”, the method is a checkout detail.

12. When money enters

Only when both hold for a full month: D30 active above 40% and founder seats above 8% of D7 actives. Then, in order, with ?src= on each: one sponsored issue of one dev newsletter; one paid video with a creator who already covered us for free; and nothing else until those two report their cost per paired install. Budget starts at $500/month and doubles only when cost per paired install is under $3 (est.) and D30 holds.