The GTM Co-Founder – open-source GTM skills for solo dev-tool/AI founders

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founder-brief.template.md

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gtm-roadmap.template.md

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For the founder building it alone.

If you're a technical founder pouring your own money, your nights, and your weekends into something you believe in, with no funding, no team, no commercial co-founder, and some days it is just plain hard, then this is for you. Especially you.

Building alone is isolating. The engineering, you can do in your sleep. It's the other half that keeps you up at 2am, with no one in the room to think it through: who is this even for? why would anyone pay? why did nobody come when I shipped?

That's what this is: the GTM co-founder you don't have (yet), a full set of go-to-market skills sitting in your corner, inside the agent you already code in. Not a course. Frameworks with real numbers and concrete next steps, not theory, built from years of selling and advising developer tools, sharpened by the sharpest thinking in the field (Adam Frankl and Jakub Czakon), and pressure-tested by founders who used it in the trenches, so the commercial side can feel as rigorous, and as doable, as the code.

You don't have to figure this part out alone anymore.

Answer a set of questions once (about 15 minutes), and your agent builds you a prioritized GTM roadmap, then works it with you one move at a time: positioning, first users, launch, pricing, in the order that matters for your stage.

Not marketing tactics or SEO skills. This is the strategy half of go-to-market: who it's for, why they'd pay, and how to land your first users. For the founder who can build anything but freezes on that.

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, Antigravity and any agent that supports the Agent Skills spec.

See it in action

A real example: five questions, then a diagnosis the founder couldn't see themselves.

GTM.Co-Founder.Example.Session.mp4

How to use it

Never used "skills" before? You don't need to. These are just markdown playbooks. The "skill" part only means an agent knows when to reach for each one. Pick the path that fits.

Path 1: zero setup (30 seconds)

Open any skill, copy the text, paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor, and say:

Apply this to my product: [one line on what you're building].

Start with 00-start-here, then 01-strategy-and-roadmap. That is the spine of the whole thing.

Path 2: hand your agent the folder (2 minutes)

In Cursor or Claude Code, open this repo (or your own project with it cloned) and paste this once:

You are my GTM co-founder. Read AGENTS.md and the skills in this repo. Start with 00-start-here to interview me one question at a time and write a docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md. Then run 01-strategy-and-roadmap to turn that into a prioritized docs/gtm-cofounder/gtm-roadmap.md. From then on, work the roadmap with me one move at a time. Offer, never impose: don't start a task I haven't picked, and if I say no to something, park it and move on. Be direct and specific, no fluff, and always end by telling me the single next move.

Path 3: install as real skills (they auto-trigger)

Claude Code (direct)

git clone https://github.com/AIDevGTM/gtm-cofounder.git cp -r gtm-cofounder/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

Claude Code (plugin marketplace)

/plugin marketplace add AIDevGTM/gtm-cofounder /plugin install gtm-cofounder@gtm-cofounder

skills.sh CLI (any agent)

npx skills add AIDevGTM/gtm-cofounder

Cursor / Codex / other agents Copy the skills/ folder into your agent's skills directory. Each skill is self-contained: one folder, one SKILL.md, zero dependencies.

The skills

0 · Start here: brief, then plan (do this first)

Two one-time steps set up everything else. First, the founder brief: answer just five core questions and the agent writes a docs/gtm-cofounder/founder-brief.md it reads before every other skill, so "sharpen your ICP" means your ICP and "find your villain" means your villain, not a textbook's. The rest of the intake is optional and answered as you go: each skill asks for the deeper questions it needs, when it needs them, and tells you what answering unlocks, so you get value in minutes instead of after a long form. It separates what you've validated with real users from what you're still assuming, and routes the assumptions to talk-to-users so the brief gets truer over time instead of ossifying a guess.

Then the roadmap: the agent turns that brief into an honest diagnosis and a prioritized, stage-aware plan in docs/gtm-cofounder/gtm-roadmap.md, the one Now move, what's Next, and what to park for Later. This is the hub you come back to every session, so you never stare at a dead chat wondering what to do next. It sequences the skills for you instead of leaving you to guess which one to trigger.

Skill Reach for it when…

start-here Setup, or the agent keeps giving generic advice because it doesn't know your business

strategy-and-roadmap You don't know what to work on next, or you're being handed one-off tasks that don't add up to a plan

1 · Figure out who it's for

Skill Reach for it when…

who-is-this-for You built it "for developers", but "developers" is not an ICP, and you can't say who says no

talk-to-users You've never interviewed a user who isn't already your friend, so your roadmap is a guess

2 · Say it so it lands

Skill Reach for it when…

positioning-and-story Your homepage describes your solution, not their problem, and you sound like every competitor

beyond-the-wrapper (AI products only, skip if not) People call your AI product "just a wrapper," everyone claims AI, and you can't say why you win when the model is a commodity

value-prop-that-converts Your value prop says "powerful," "better," and "seamless", words a developer has learned to ignore

the-homepage Your landing page is written for the buyer, who never visits it, instead of the developer, who does

3 · Get your first users

Skill Reach for it when…

time-to-first-value People sign up or star it, then never get it working, or come once and never come back

first-50-users You shipped, tweeted once, and nobody came, and you don't know which channel to even try

launch-it You're sitting on a Show HN / Reddit / Product Hunt launch because you're scared of getting flamed

market-to-devs-sell-to-buyers Developers love it, star it, use the free tier, and nobody will pay

pricing You're guessing at a number, gave it away too cheap, or "developers won't pay" so you never charge

founder-led-sales Developers love it and use the free tier, but you've never sold anything and "let me think about it" kills every deal

4 · Keep it going

Skill Reach for it when…

founder-led-content "Marketing" feels gross, so you do none, while your competitor owns the conversation

know-if-its-working You have dashboards full of vanity metrics and no idea whether GTM is actually working

market-scan A rival just rebranded or a new tool appeared, and your positioning is answering last year's market

What's inside each skill

Every SKILL.md gives you frameworks with actual thresholds (not principles), decision trees for the calls that stall technical founders, the mistakes that look reasonable but quietly kill you, real examples, and a checklist you can run in the next 30 minutes. Written in a founder's language, direct, specific, allergic to fluff.

Where this comes from

The spine of this pack is my own experience selling and advising developer tools: years as an enterprise and founding account executive, and advising early-stage dev-tool founders through exactly the fights these skills cover. That lived experience is what most of this is.

It's sharpened by the two people who have shaped developer go-to-market thinking the most, and their work is worth reading in full:

Adam Frankl, The Developer-Facing Startup. Strategy and philosophy: TAB customer discovery, the Hero/Villain/Wise-Advisor story, the DREAM funnel, differentiation levels, net developer retention.

Jakub Czakon, markepear.dev. Tactical execution: homepage anatomy, developer psychology, channel playbooks (HN, Reddit, X), README/SEO, "market to developers, sell to decision-makers."

And it was pressure-tested by founders who used it as design partners and made it sharper:

Lubos, founder of hey/api

Thibault and Max, cofounders of OpenStatus

Where a framework is theirs, the credit is theirs. Where it holds up in practice, that's the founders who tested it. Where it misses, that's on me.

When you don't want to do it alone

Skills are great at the knowable calls. But some days you don't need another framework, you need a person who's been in the trenches, who's seen this exact fight across dozens of dev-tool companies, and who can tell you it's going to be okay and what to do next.

That's the day job, and it comes in two shapes:

The DevTool GTM Company is mine. It's where I work with founders at exactly your stage: very early, often pre-funding, on the strategy and positioning that gets you off the ground. If this pack is helping, that's the human version of it.

With QC Growth I work with more established teams: seed through Series A and B, including a16z and Sequoia-backed companies, where we do the whole thing: strategy, execution, GTM engineering, and operations.

Free skills for everyone; a human in your corner when the road gets steep. Either way, you're not doing this alone.

Contributing

Battle-tested a framework? Found a gap? Open an issue or PR, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT, free to use, fork, and distribute.

Built by Shane O'Connor · The DevTool GTM Company · LinkedIn

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