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

> Source: <https://github.com/AIDevGTM/gtm-cofounder>
> Published: 2026-07-27 21:51:56+00:00

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

**), and pressure-tested by founders who used it in the trenches, so the commercial side can feel as rigorous, and as**

[Jakub Czakon](https://www.markepear.dev)*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.

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

## GTM.Co-Founder.Example.Session.mp4

**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.

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.

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.

**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.

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 |

| 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 |

| 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 |

| 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 |

| 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 |

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.

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**,. Strategy and philosophy: TAB customer discovery, the Hero/Villain/Wise-Advisor story, the DREAM funnel, differentiation levels, net developer retention.[The Developer-Facing Startup](https://developerfacingstartup.dev/)**Jakub Czakon**,. Tactical execution: homepage anatomy, developer psychology, channel playbooks (HN, Reddit, X), README/SEO, "market to developers, sell to decision-makers."[markepear.dev](https://www.markepear.dev)

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

**Lubos**, founder of[hey/api](https://heyapi.dev)** Thibault and Max**, cofounders of[OpenStatus](https://openstatus.dev)

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.

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:

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.[The DevTool GTM Company](https://thedevtoolgtmcompany.com)- With
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.[QC Growth](https://qcgrowth.com)

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

Battle-tested a framework? Found a gap? Open an issue or PR, see [CONTRIBUTING.md](/AIDevGTM/gtm-cofounder/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md).

MIT, free to use, fork, and distribute.

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