2 min lesson
Close the loop in public
Make the call in this situation: "You're launching a new agent capability to all Cursor users. What's the single most important thing to define before you ship and why?" Explain what supports it.
Step 1 of 3
Close the loop in publicthe launch isn't done at GA
Developers notice when a vendor ships and disappears and they notice when one ships and listens. The feedback loop is part of the launch, not a cleanup phase after it. Capture signal fast, triage it and be visible about what you're changing.
- Telemetry
- Acceptance rate, retention on the feature, latency, error rates - the unsentimental truth about whether it's working
- Forum / community
- The forum, Discord and the subreddit where developers say what they actually think, fast and unfiltered
- Support tickets
- The bugs and confusion that became real enough for someone to write in
- Your own usage
- You're a heavy user; if it annoys you on day three, it annoys everyone
Triage daily in the first week. A fix shipped in 48 hours buys more trust than the launch post did.
“I'd dogfood it, run a flagged beta, then stage GA at 5/25/100 with kill criteria written down before launch - acceptance and p95 latency on the core loop, not just adoption of the new feature. PMM and I co-own the changelog, but I'm watching telemetry and the forum the first week and shipping a fix in 48 hours if something's off. The launch isn't done at GA; it's done when the curve is stable and people trust it.”
When asked how you'd launch a feature, resist the marketing-plan answer. Lead with readiness and rollout safety, name your kill criteria as numbers and frame PMM as a co-owner you drive alongside. That sequence tells the hiring team you've actually shipped to real users, not managed a launch from a slide.