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time-to-first-value

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Turn a curious developer into an activated one: the docs, the quickstart, and the first-run experience that gets them to their first real win fast, and back again. Use when people sign up or star the repo but never get it working, come once and never return, or you're about to pour traffic into a first-run that leaks.

skills/08-time-to-first-value/SKILL.md

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# Time to first value (get them to the first win)

> For a dev tool, the product is the pitch. A developer tries it alone and decides in minutes. Acquisition without activation is just a faster way to lose people.

**Use this when:** people sign up or star the repo and then nothing, they get it working once and never come back, your docs assume the reader already understands it, or you are about to spend on a launch or a channel while the first ten minutes still leak.

## The core idea

You can nail your positioning, your homepage, and your launch, and still lose everyone in the first ten minutes. For a dev tool the first run *is* the sale: the developer tries it, alone, without talking to you, and decides. Two gates, straight from Frankl's DREAM funnel:

- **Evaluation:** can they get it working over a weekend, with zero human help? (the weekend test)
- **Activation:** how fast do they reach their first real win, the "I'm awesome" moment (time to first value)?

Fix this before you scale acquisition. Pouring users into a leaky first run just loses them faster, and `know-if-its-working` will show you that retention, not signups, is the number that matters.
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