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# Hacker News submission guide — Structural Gap

A short operator's guide to submitting Structural Gap analyses to Hacker News
without violating the site's norms or burning the credibility of the work.

## What to submit

- The **canonical analysis URL** on structuralgap.com (never a marketing page,
  never a tweet, never a screenshot).
- One submission per analysis. Do not resubmit if the first attempt does not
  catch — wait for the next analysis.

## Title rules

HN flags editorialized titles. Use the analysis title as published, with the
company name in the front so the topic is unambiguous on the front page.

**Good titles:**

- `Cloudflare Forge: a $107.5M case for productizing VibeSDK`
- `The $1.15B opportunity inside Cloudflare's open-source AI coding stack`
- `Modeling what Cloudflare could build with VibeSDK and Workers AI`

**Bad titles (do not use):**

- `Why Cloudflare needs to build this NOW` (editorialized, all-caps)
- `Show HN: my analysis of Cloudflare` (Show HN is for things people can run)
- `[infographic] Cloudflare's $18B opportunity` (no infographics on HN)

## Submission timing

- **Tuesday–Thursday, 8–10am Pacific**, when the front-page churn rate is
  highest and EU/US daytime overlap is widest.
- Do not submit on a major news day (Apple event, FOMC, large earnings).
- Do not submit on a Monday holiday.

## Engagement rules

- **Comment on your own thread within the first 30 minutes.** A short note
  from the author with the methodology, a link to the spreadsheet model, and
  an invitation for technical critique. Do not summarize the conclusion —
  let the work do that.
- **Respond to every substantive comment within four hours.** Disagreement is
  fine. Defensive responses are not. Quote the part of the analysis being
  questioned and answer with a number or a citation.
- **Do not vote on your own submission.** Do not ask others to vote. The HN
  shadowban for vote manipulation is silent and permanent.
- **Do not delete the submission** if it doesn't catch. Leave the record.

## What success looks like

- Front page for 6+ hours with 100+ comments → measurable inbound traffic for
  weeks.
- Off the front page in 2 hours with 30 comments → still useful: the
  conversation is the asset, not the rank.

## What to do after

- Save the discussion permalink in `data/launch-log.md` for future reference.
- If a critique surfaces a real factual error, **publish a corrections note
  on the analysis page** within 24 hours and reply on the HN thread with a
  link to the correction. This is the most valuable credibility move
  available.

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Maintained at https://structuralgap.com/brand/pr/hn-submission-guide.md