Engage

Find the threads about your product and answer them from your docs.

DevRelay listens on Hacker News, Reddit, X and GitHub for your brand, your competitors and the problems you solve. Threads worth a reply get a draft grounded in your docs, with a disclosure. You approve it and post it yourself.

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Engage · r/sysadminGroundingDisclosureLinks

r/sysadmin · 41 comments

Two of us keep replying to the same customer email. How do you stop that?

Reply draft · answer

The root problem is that nobody can see who has a thread. Two habits fix most of it with any tool: claim a thread before you write, and put the claim where people reply, not in a separate chat.

Disclosure: I work on Acme, which shows who is typing inside the conversation for this reason.

Example · Acme is a made-up product

4 sources: HN, Reddit, X, GitHub
Drafts from your docs: or no draft at all
You post: never an API

Why nobody answers

Someone asked how to do the thing you built. Nobody from your team replied.

The questions are public. Finding them, and answering well, is the job nobody has time for.

Nobody sees the thread

Mentions are spread across HN, subreddits, X and other people's issues. By the time someone finds one, the thread is two days old.

Replies read like ads

A rushed reply drops a link and a pitch. Communities notice, downvote it, and remember the name.

Tools that post for you get banned

Automated replies break the rules of most communities. The account and the brand pay for it.

Where it listens

Four places developers talk. No LinkedIn, no scraping.

Each topic is a set of terms: your brand, a competitor, a use case or a problem people describe. DevRelay searches the sources you turn on every 10 to 30 minutes, drops bots, your own accounts and anything off-topic, and groups what's left into threads.

Hacker News

Stories and comments, through the public HN search.

Posts and comments across Reddit, through Reddit's API.

X

Recent posts, within a monthly read budget you set.

GitHub

Issues and discussions in public repositories.

How it works

From a thread to a reply you'd put your name on.

DevRelay finds, reads, drafts and checks. You approve and post.

needs_help   fit: strong    → draft a reply
evaluating   fit: partial   → draft a reply
sharing      fit: none      → watch
security report             → needs you

Reads the thread, not just the keyword

Every thread is classified: what the person wants (help, evaluating tools, switching, sharing, venting), whether your product actually fits, and the risks. A thread earns a draft only above your reply threshold, best threads first, up to your daily cap.

Answers from your docs

The draft is written from your docs, site and releases, in the first person of the voice you set up. If your docs don't answer the question, there's no draft: the thread waits with “reply yourself or add docs”, so you see the gap instead of a made-up answer.

Disclosure when the product is named Links from your docs or the thread only No unsupported claims about competitors Not the same reply twice

Discloses, every time

A reply that names your product ends with a disclosure line (“Disclosure: I work on Acme”). Links come only from your docs, your site or the thread. Claims about a competitor are checked and dropped if they aren't a fair statement. These checks run again whenever you edit the draft.

You post it

Approve the draft, then Open and copy: DevRelay opens the thread and puts the reply on your clipboard. Paste it, post it, and mark it posted. DevRelay never posts a reply for you, on any platform.

Keeps an eye on the thread

After you post, DevRelay checks the thread for your reply and for answers to it for a week. A follow-up question comes back to your Engage inbox.

Some threads are for a person

Security reports, legal threats, personal crises and anything involving a minor never get a draft, and the classifier can escalate others, like an angry customer during an outage. They go to Needs attention so someone on your team decides what to say.

Insights

What people ask, and what they complain about.

Every classified thread also feeds Engage Insights, so listening tells you what to write next.

Topics

Mentions per topic over 7 and 30 days, and what people post: questions, bug reports, discussions.

Competitor pains

What people complain about or ask for around your competitors. Shown to you only; drafts never make claims about competitors.

Recurring questions

Questions that come up five or more times in 30 days. One your docs answer is worth a post; one they don't is a docs gap.

FAQ

Questions about Engage.

01Does DevRelay post replies for me?

No. Replies are drafted and checked in DevRelay, and a person approves each one. Then you open the thread, paste and post it from your own account. There is no setting that makes DevRelay post a reply.

02Whose voice are the replies in?

One voice per workspace, set in Settings: a name, a role and the account handles you reply from. Replies are written in the first person as that person, and DevRelay uses the handles to skip your own posts.

03Which sources does it search, and what about LinkedIn?

Hacker News, Reddit, X and GitHub issues and discussions in public repos. LinkedIn has no search API for this, so it isn't a source. X is read within a monthly budget you set in Settings; listening on X stops for the month when it's used up.

04What if my docs don't answer the question?

Then there's no draft. The thread stays in Watching with a note to reply yourself or add docs. Engage Insights also lists questions people keep asking, which is usually a docs page waiting to be written.

05Can it reply to competitors' threads?

It can draft a reply where your product genuinely fits, always with a disclosure. Any sentence that states something about a competitor is checked, and one that isn't a fair statement fails the draft.

06Which plan do I need?

Listening and Engage are on the DevRelay plan. On the free plan you can set up one topic and preview what it finds on Hacker News.

ProductReddit and HN posts: posts that teach, for the communities you pickRead more ProductLaunch posts: X and LinkedIn posts for every releaseRead more ProductDocs updates: the missing section, drafted from the changeRead more

Be in the threads where people ask about you.

Add your brand, a competitor and the problem you solve. Engage fills up with threads worth a reply.

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No credit card · Nothing posts without your approval