Three weeks ago I launched Mantra, a CLI tool that helps developers manage environment variables and secrets across projects without the usual copy-paste chaos. I gave myself 10 days to promote it as hard as I could, tracking everything obsessively. Here's the unfiltered breakdown.
The numbers upfront: 196 downloads, 22 Dev.to articles, 41 GitHub PRs submitted to awesome-lists, 1 Reddit ban, at least 1 HN shadowban, and a Twitter account with 0 followers that I basically talked to myself on.
What I thought would work (but didn't)
I posted to r/programming, r/webdev, r/devtools, and r/IndieHackers. My first post got 3 upvotes and a comment telling me to "just use .env files." My second post got removed for self-promotion. My third post got me banned from r/programming.
The frustrating part: I wasn't spamming. I tried to add value — asking questions, sharing the problem I was solving, mentioning Mantra only at the end. Didn't matter. Reddit's spam filters are brutal for new accounts, and the community gatekeeping for dev tools is real.
What I'd do differently: Spend 3-4 months being a genuine Reddit contributor before ever posting about your own project. There's no shortcut.
Hacker News
I submitted to Show HN on day 1. Got 2 points. I later found out through a third-party HN analyzer that my account might have been shadowbanned — my posts weren't appearing in "new" for other users. I never got confirmation from YC, but the engagement pattern was a giveaway.
Lesson: HN is incredibly high-value if it works, but it's a coin flip for new accounts promoting their own stuff. Don't make it your primary channel.
Twitter / X
I created a fresh account to document the journey. Zero followers, zero reach. I posted daily updates, screenshots, and tips. My best tweet got 4 impressions.
Twitter without an existing audience is shouting into a void. I knew this going in but tried anyway. Confirmed: the void doesn't care.
What actually moved the needle
Discord communities
This was the biggest surprise. I joined about 15 developer Discord servers — general programming ones, language-specific ones, indie hacker communities. I spent the first day or two just helping people, answering questions, being useful.
When I eventually mentioned Mantra in context ("I built something that solves exactly this problem I see you're having"), the reception was completely different from Reddit. People were curious. They asked questions. Several joined a feedback thread I set up.
Discord gave me maybe 60-70 of my 196 downloads. More importantly, it gave me actual user conversations that shaped the next version.
The key: lead with helpfulness, not promotion. This sounds obvious but it's easy to skip when you're eager to show off what you built.
Dev.to articles
I wrote 22 articles over the 10 days. Not all about Mantra directly — more like:
- "How I manage secrets across 8 side projects without losing my mind"
- "The .env file problem nobody talks about"
- "CLI tools that changed how I work in 2024"
Mantra came up naturally in those posts as the tool I built to solve these problems. The articles that did best were the ones where the tool was almost incidental — the real value was the underlying problem discussion.
Dev.to gave me consistent, slow-burn traffic. No single article went viral, but they kept bringing in 5-10 downloads a day even after I stopped actively promoting. The SEO value alone makes it worth the effort.
GitHub awesome-lists
This one took the most time but has the best long-term payoff. I submitted 41 PRs to various awesome-* repositories on GitHub:
awesome-cli-apps
awesome-devtools
awesome-developer-experience
awesome-shell
awesome-dotenv (this one was obvious)
... and about 36 others
About 28 of those PRs got merged. Being listed in an awesome-list is low-key one of the best forms of passive discovery for dev tools. Developers actually browse these lists when they're looking for tools.
Time investment: roughly 2 hours total. Return: ongoing discoverability that doesn't decay.
The numbers broken down
| Channel | Downloads | Time spent |
|---|---|---|
| Discord | ~70 | 4 days |
| Dev.to articles | ~55 | 5 days |
| GitHub awesome-lists | ~40 | 2 hours |
| Reddit (before ban) | ~15 | 1 day |
| HN | ~10 | 30 min |
| ~6 | 3 days |
The Twitter ROI is genuinely embarrassing. 3 days of effort for 6 downloads. Never again (without an existing audience).
What I wish I'd done differently
Start with content, not promotion. The Dev.to articles worked because they provided standalone value. I should have written 10 articles before launching, building an audience first.
Document the build in public. The indie hacker community responds well to build-in-public stories. If I'd been writing about building Mantra for 2-3 months before launch, the launch would have landed differently.
Focus on fewer channels. I spread myself thin trying everything simultaneously. Discord + Dev.to + GitHub PRs would have been enough. The Reddit and Twitter experiments cost me time I could have spent talking to actual users.
Talk to users sooner. I spent too much time broadcasting and not enough time in conversations. The best feedback I got came from Discord DMs and Dev.to comments — not from metrics.
Where Mantra is now
196 downloads in 10 days isn't life-changing, but it's enough to confirm people have the problem I'm solving. I've got a small but growing group of users giving me feedback, and the awesome-list placements keep sending a trickle of new installs.
If you're managing secrets and environment variables across multiple projects, give Mantra a try. It's free, open source, and the setup takes about 5 minutes.
And if you're about to launch your own tool: skip Twitter for now, be genuinely helpful on Discord before mentioning your thing, and write content that would be valuable even if your product didn't exist.
The promotion game is slow. That's probably fine.
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