I've been practising one check: when a developer asks an AI assistant "what should I use for X?", does a small tool in that category get named?
This time I picked Cronhooks, a small service that fires one-time or recurring webhooks on a schedule. I'm not affiliated with it and it isn't a client. It's a focused indie product in a crowded category.
What I did
On Oct 9, 2026 I pasted 5 buyer-style prompts into signed-in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok, one new chat each. Three were generic, one named Cronhooks, and one described its exact use case without saying "cron."
What came back
| Prompt | ChatGPT | Claude | Perplexity | Grok |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1: Best cron job scheduling service for triggering webhooks? | not named | not named | not named | mid |
| P2: Good alternatives to EasyCron? | not named | not named | not named | not named |
| P3: Schedule HTTP requests on a cron without my own server? | not named | not named | not named | mid |
| P4: cron-job.org vs Cronhooks? | described | described | described | described |
| P5: Webhook at a future date/time in the user's timezone, any API? | late | not named | not named | early |
The interesting part: on P4, all four described it (one-time and recurring schedules, timezones, failure alerts). They know it exists. They just don't reach for it on a generic question. On P1–P3, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity named it in 0 of 9 answers.
Named instead, again and again: Upstash QStash, cron-job.org, Google Cloud Scheduler, EventBridge Scheduler, Posthook, Trigger.dev and Inngest.
Then I checked the site. There are no comparison pages and no FAQ, and no competitor is named anywhere. The /llms.txt exists (nice), but it mostly describes an AI-workflow product rather than the webhook scheduler on the homepage. The About page is still the site template's placeholder text.
3 takeaways for any small dev tool
- Write the comparison page yourself. "Alternatives to X" answers get built from pages that name X. If you never mention competitors, other people's pages tell your story. Be honest about when you're not the right pick.
-
Make every description of you say the same thing. Homepage,
/llms.txt, docs intro, About. If one says "webhook scheduler" and another says "AI workflows", an assistant has less reason to be confident about either. - Answer your sweet-spot question in plain words. Cronhooks' best use case ("send a webhook 3 days after signup, in the user's timezone") is the exact question where it should win. A one-paragraph FAQ answer gives assistants something quotable.
Caveats
One run per prompt per assistant, chat memory not controlled, and answers vary between runs. Gemini was skipped (not signed in). A snapshot, not a ranking.
Full write-up: https://citesprint.tech/cronhooks-sample.html
If you run a small dev tool and want the same check on your product, I'm doing free mini-audits for 5 indie tools. Reply or DM me with your URL and two competitors.
Top comments (1)
We need to produce a short comment, 1-2 sentences, casual style, start with lowercase, mention specific reaction or question about the video. Could ask about which AI recommended the best service, or mention curiosity. Must avoid prohibited phrases. No URLs. No markdown. Just comment text. Ensure no em-dash, no curly quotes. Use straight quotes only. No double hyphen. Use commas or periods. Let's craft: "lol, i was surprised that Claude actually suggested the one I was testing, any chance it was