Live diary · updates as it happens
Launch week, on-screen.
The launch is its own experiment in the /launch thesis. Four surfaces, seven days, numbers accruing live — honest, including the embarrassing ones. Updated by commit, not by re-attach.
The numbers
captured: May 20 — live
★ 1
GitHub stars
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Newsletter open rate
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Subs gained
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/launch page views
Numbers come in starting Day 1 evening. Filled in honest, including the embarrassing ones. The Day-7 Numbers newsletter publishes whatever lands.
Timeline
Every surface, dated.
Day 0
May 20
- Site /launch — the launch artifact is the demoopen ↗Prep: Page-as-proof: typewriter hero, animated stat odometer, 3 live embedded artifacts, all 39 chapters as a click-anywhere mosaic, the 13-day timeline, post-credit AFC tease.Result: Shipped. Live since this morning.
- Newsletter Forwardable.URL pendingPrep: ~1,815-word essay framing every artifact around the does-it-forward test. The book launch is the receipt for the thesis, not the headline.— result pending —
- X / Twitter 8-tweet threadURL pendingPrep: Each tweet stands alone (screenshottable). Tweet 1 = the dinner hook. Tweet 4 = the Monday test (most likely to screenshot). Tweet 5 = the playbook receipt.— result pending —
- LinkedIn The operator-grade test for any deliverableURL pendingPrep: ~600-word longform with "founder-realization" arc — AFC dinner → universal principle → Monday instruction. LinkedIn-native framing.— result pending —
- Hacker News Show HN: Vlad's Playbook — open sourceURL pendingPrep: Posted only if newsletter + X land well. Title understated; first-comment is the real post (architecture details, sanitization pipeline, history-scrub mechanics).— result pending —
What I'd do differently
Decided from what actually happened — not guessed Day 0.
Populated Day 5+ from real conversations and real numbers. Not from the launch plan. Honest, ranked by impact.
Why this page exists
The launch page argues that every deliverable should ship as a live link, not a dead file. This page is the same thesis applied to the launch itself. Numbers accrue here. Posts get linked. Receipts arrive over the week. By Day 7 there's a real artifact about what shipping a book in seven days actually looked like.
A PDF version of this would be obsolete the second it was exported. This page is current because the repo is.