u/Mstep85

Life got busy. I stopped having the hours to babysit long AI sessions, so I built something to handle the repetitive parts for me.

Prompt queues, personas, crash recovery, looping, planning. Works across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek and a few others.

It's called Ghost in the Loop. Free, no account, installs like any userscript.

Dev build: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop/main/dev/ghost-in-the-loop.user.js

GitHub: https://github.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop

Here's the thing though. I built it around my habits, which means my blind spots are baked in. I have no idea how someone who works differently would even use this, or what they'd immediately want that isn't there.

So I'm curious. If you tried it, what would you actually use it for? What's missing? What gets in the way?

I'm not looking for bug reports. I'm looking for how other people actually work with AI, so I can figure out what this thing should become.

Built an AI script because adulting killed my free time. Helpz test and improve please

Life got busy. I don't have the hours to run long AI sessions anymore, so I built something to handle the repetitive parts for me. Looping, prompt queues, personas, crash recovery, planning. Works across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek and a few others.

It's called Ghost in the Loop. Free, no account, installs like any userscript.

New prototype at the repo: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop/main/dev/ghost-in-the-loop.user.js

GitHub: https://github.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop

What I actually want is simple: show me if it fails in your browsers, dev tool errors, html errors, or your personal read on it.

I built this around my own workflows, which means I've probably baked in my own blind spots without realizing it. If you work differently, use different platforms, chain tasks in weird ways, or have a prompting style I haven't thought of, I want to see where it fits and where it falls apart.

Less "please find my bugs" and more "what slot is missing from this thing."

I'll take anything. Friction points, feature gaps, workflow ideas. Weirder the better..

Built an AI script because adulting killed my free time. Helpz test and improve please

Life got busy. I don't have the hours to run long AI sessions anymore, so I built something to handle the repetitive parts for me. Looping, prompt queues, personas, crash recovery, planning. Works across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek and a few others.

It's called Ghost in the Loop. Free, no account, installs like any userscript.

New prototype at the repo: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop/main/dev/ghost-in-the-loop.user.js

GitHub: https://github.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop

What I actually want is simple: show me if it fails in your browsers, dev tool errors, html errors, or your personal read on it.

I built this around my own workflows, which means I've probably baked in my own blind spots without realizing it. If you work differently, use different platforms, chain tasks in weird ways, or have a prompting style I haven't thought of, I want to see where it fits and where it falls apart.

Less "please find my bugs" and more "what slot is missing from this thing."

I'll take anything. Friction points, feature gaps, workflow ideas. Weirder the better..

Life got busy. I don't have the hours to run long AI sessions anymore, so I built something to handle the repetitive parts for me. Looping, prompt queues, personas, crash recovery, planning. Works across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, DeepSeek and a few others.

It's called Ghost in the Loop. Free, no account, installs like any userscript.

New prototype at the repo: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop/main/dev/ghost-in-the-loop.user.js

GitHub: https://github.com/MShneur/ghost-in-the-loop

What I actually want is simple: show me if it fails in your browsers, dev tool errors, html errors, or your personal read on it.

I built this around my own workflows, which means I've probably baked in my own blind spots without realizing it. If you work differently, use different platforms, chain tasks in weird ways, or have a prompting style I haven't thought of, I want to see where it fits and where it falls apart.

Less "please find my bugs" and more "what slot is missing from this thing."

I'll take anything. Friction points, feature gaps, workflow ideas. Weirder the better..

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

---

What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

---

The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

---

On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

---

If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

---

If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

---

TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

---

What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

---

The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

---

On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

---

If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

---

If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

---

TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

---

What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

---

The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

---

On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

---

If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

---

If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

---

TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

---

What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

---

The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

---

On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

---

If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

---

If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

---

TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

---

What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

---

The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

---

On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

---

If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

---

If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

---

TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

---

What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

---

The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

---

On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

---

If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

---

If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

---

TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Look, I get it. Marketing is exhausting. Ten hours building a feature feels productive. Ten hours "marketing" it feels like screaming into a void. That frustration is real and valid.

But here's the thing — a lot of these tools being sold to you right now are not solving that problem. They're just monetizing your confusion about it.

"Understands your brand" = you gave it a paragraph about your product. "Writes like you" = you fed it a few examples. "Finds relevant users" = keyword search on Reddit and Hacker News. "Proven viral templates" = someone copied top posts and labeled them viral. "Strategy buddy" = a follow-up prompt that says "how's my growth doing?"

That's it. That's the product. Dressed up in a landing page.

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What's actually going on under the hood

Two concepts do most of the heavy lifting in these tools, and you can build both yourself in under an hour:

PRD (Product Requirements Document): This is just a document that explains what your product is, who it's for, what problem it solves, and what makes it different. It's the map. You write it once, you hand it to any AI model, and suddenly the AI has actual context instead of guessing. No app needed. A Google doc works fine.

Governance file: This is just a ruleset you give the model. Your tone, your audience, what you will and won't say, what sounds like you and what doesn't. Think of it as a brand bible in plain text. Every good AI workflow has one. Most paid tools are just hiding theirs from you so you feel dependent on them.

Combine those two with a halfway decent prompt inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity — tools you probably already have — and you have 90% of what's being sold here. For free. Right now. Today.

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The DIY walkthrough

If you want to do this yourself, here's the actual workflow:

1. Write a one-page PRD. What is the product, who needs it, why does it matter, what makes it different.
2. Write a governance file. Your tone, your audience, things you will and won't claim, examples of good responses.
3. Build a small prompt library. One for post drafts. One for replies. One for researching where your audience actually hangs out.
4. Review everything manually before posting. Automation without judgment is just spam at scale.
5. Track what actually gets replies, clicks, and signups. Not impressions. Real signals.
6. Do a quick audience survey. Ask your actual users what they care about. That's more useful than any "strategy buddy."

That's it. No subscription. No dashboard. Just structure and iteration.

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On vibe coding and vibe marketing

Vibe coding lowered the floor for builders, which is great. But it also lowered the floor for people packaging half-finished ideas as products and selling them before anyone's verified they work.

A few hours of real prompting beats a month of automated noise. When your output is generic, people notice. You're not just wasting time — you're actively damaging your own brand. Every spammy reply, every recycled template, every GPT-flavored post is a withdrawal from the trust account you're trying to build.

The real bottleneck in marketing has never been generating text. It's knowing who actually gives a damn, where they are, and what to say to them specifically. No wrapper app solves that. You still have to think.

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If you want to actually learn this stuff

Don't buy a tool. Read a few posts from real builders first. Pick a newsletter from an actual developer — not a "growth hacker," not a LinkedIn influencer, someone who ships things and writes about what worked and what didn't.

Spend fifteen minutes on the porcelain throne reading how someone structures their workflow. Not to copy it. Just to understand the steps, read the critique, and figure out what you'd do differently.

Then make your own version. Test it. See what lands. That's how you build something with actual signal behind it.

The builders I respect most put their tools on GitHub with a readme and say "if this helps you, great — and if it teaches you to make your own, even better." That's the energy. That's how you stay on the right side of this.

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If you have a tool that genuinely helps — say so. Drop it in the comments with what it actually does and what it doesn't do. Honest is better than hyped.

If you have a shorter version of this, a better explanation, or a workflow that worked for you — please add it. The goal here isn't to be right, it's to make sure people have what they need to make an informed decision.

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TL;DR

Most "AI marketing" tools are a PRD and a governance file in a trench coat. You can build both yourself in an hour with any AI model you already have. Learn the workflow. Read the critique. Make your own version. Ten followers and a polished pitch is theater, not strategy. If you learned nothing else, go read one real builder's workflow before you buy anything.

Ghost in the Loop keeps multi-step AI conversations moving across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Copilot, Grok, Manus, and more.

​

It is built to continue conversations automatically, recover from UI failures, manage prompt queues, and export logs.

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TL;DR: I’m looking for testers who can break it and tell me what needs fixing.

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Please comment with:

- what model or provider you tested

- what failed

- what you expected

- any code-level suggestions

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GitHub link in the comments.

Hi,

I've been sharing Manus on social media and the response has actually been pretty positive. I've gotten a lot of upvotes/thumbs-ups and quite a few people saying they were going to sign up through my referral.

The problem is that I've now seen at least 10 separate comments/posts from people saying the referral shows as "invalid" when they try to use it.

At this point I'm concerned that a large percentage of the people I referred never actually got counted because of a problem with the referral system.

This is the referral link I was given:

https://manus.im/invitation/L722LISUH3EMDS?utm\_source=invitation&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=system\_share

Referral code:

L722LISUH3EMDS

Can someone explain what's going on? Were referrals disabled, changed, or is this code not working correctly? If these users attempted to sign up through my link, I'd also like to know whether those referrals were tracked.

Thanks.

TL;DR: Future archaeologists will discover this post and conclude I traded a referral link for free AI credits. They will be correct.

500 free credits:

https://manus.im/invitation/L722LISUH3EMDS?utm\_source=invitation&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=system\_share

Anyway...

You know how in every sci-fi movie they promise us AI assistants?

Yeah. Somehow we ended up with AI that needs constant supervision.

Me: "Research this topic."

AI: "Certainly. Before I begin, please provide your goals, audience, format, timeline, preferred writing style, risk tolerance, blood type, and your mother's maiden name."

Thirty minutes later I'm managing the AI instead of the AI helping me.

I've been messing around with Manus and the thing I like is that it behaves more like an actual assistant. I tell it what I need, and it goes off and fills in a lot of the blanks itself.

I don't use it as my main model for everything.

I use it like a second opinion.

Research.

Project planning.

Finding blind spots.

Comparing options.

Figuring out what I'm forgetting.

Basically all the stuff that happens before the actual work starts.

For pure coding, there are better tools.

For "here's the thing I'm trying to do, help me think through it from start to finish," it's been surprisingly useful.

Full disclosure: if you use the link, I get some credits too.

You get free credits.

I get free credits.

The robots get stronger.

Honestly that's the healthiest relationship I've had with technology in years.

TL;DR: Future archaeologists will discover this post and conclude I traded a referral link for free AI credits. They will be correct.

500 free credits:

https://manus.im/invitation/L722LISUH3EMDS?utm\_source=invitation&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=system\_share

Anyway...

You know how in every sci-fi movie they promise us AI assistants?

Yeah. Somehow we ended up with AI that needs constant supervision.

Me: "Research this topic."

AI: "Certainly. Before I begin, please provide your goals, audience, format, timeline, preferred writing style, risk tolerance, blood type, and your mother's maiden name."

Thirty minutes later I'm managing the AI instead of the AI helping me.

I've been messing around with Manus and the thing I like is that it behaves more like an actual assistant. I tell it what I need, and it goes off and fills in a lot of the blanks itself.

I don't use it as my main model for everything.

I use it like a second opinion.

Research.

Project planning.

Finding blind spots.

Comparing options.

Figuring out what I'm forgetting.

Basically all the stuff that happens before the actual work starts.

For pure coding, there are better tools.

For "here's the thing I'm trying to do, help me think through it from start to finish," it's been surprisingly useful.

Full disclosure: if you use the link, I get some credits too.

You get free credits.

I get free credits.

The robots get stronger.

Honestly that's the healthiest relationship I've had with technology in years.

TL;DR: Future archaeologists will discover this post and conclude I traded a referral link for free AI credits. They will be correct.

500 free credits:

https://manus.im/invitation/L722LISUH3EMDS?utm\_source=invitation&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=system\_share

Anyway...

You know how in every sci-fi movie they promise us AI assistants?

Yeah. Somehow we ended up with AI that needs constant supervision.

Me: "Research this topic."

AI: "Certainly. Before I begin, please provide your goals, audience, format, timeline, preferred writing style, risk tolerance, blood type, and your mother's maiden name."

Thirty minutes later I'm managing the AI instead of the AI helping me.

I've been messing around with Manus and the thing I like is that it behaves more like an actual assistant. I tell it what I need, and it goes off and fills in a lot of the blanks itself.

I don't use it as my main model for everything.

I use it like a second opinion.

Research.

Project planning.

Finding blind spots.

Comparing options.

Figuring out what I'm forgetting.

Basically all the stuff that happens before the actual work starts.

For pure coding, there are better tools.

For "here's the thing I'm trying to do, help me think through it from start to finish," it's been surprisingly useful.

Full disclosure: if you use the link, I get some credits too.

You get free credits.

I get free credits.

The robots get stronger.

Honestly that's the healthiest relationship I've had with technology in years.

TL;DR: Future archaeologists will discover this post and conclude I traded a referral link for free AI credits. They will be correct.

500 free credits:

https://manus.im/invitation/L722LISUH3EMDS?utm\_source=invitation&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=system\_share

Anyway...

You know how in every sci-fi movie they promise us AI assistants?

Yeah. Somehow we ended up with AI that needs constant supervision.

Me: "Research this topic."

AI: "Certainly. Before I begin, please provide your goals, audience, format, timeline, preferred writing style, risk tolerance, blood type, and your mother's maiden name."

Thirty minutes later I'm managing the AI instead of the AI helping me.

I've been messing around with Manus and the thing I like is that it behaves more like an actual assistant. I tell it what I need, and it goes off and fills in a lot of the blanks itself.

I don't use it as my main model for everything.

I use it like a second opinion.

Research.

Project planning.

Finding blind spots.

Comparing options.

Figuring out what I'm forgetting.

Basically all the stuff that happens before the actual work starts.

For pure coding, there are better tools.

For "here's the thing I'm trying to do, help me think through it from start to finish," it's been surprisingly useful.

Full disclosure: if you use the link, I get some credits too.

You get free credits.

I get free credits.

The robots get stronger.

Honestly that's the healthiest relationship I've had with technology in years.