Research log · 2026-10-11 · X marketing for indie devs selling software¶
Questions¶
- How to write short daily posts from products already built?
- Which X tips are backed by evidence, and which are folklore?
- What does X Premium actually give, and how to use it for traffic?
- Which open-source repos and agent skills for X are worth using to get the first paying subscribers?
Sources read¶
| Source | Type | What we took |
|---|---|---|
| xai-org/x-algorithm README | Official code | Pipeline, action list, author diversity, OON discount, new-author boost, 48 h filter, Under the Hood tool |
home-mixer/params/param.rs |
Official code | Default action weights (see x-algorithm-and-premium-facts.md) |
| About X Premium | Official help | Tiers, US prices, reply prioritization by tier, checkmark rules, Articles, Media Studio |
| X automation rules (updated April 2026) | Official policy | No duplicate posts, no keyword auto-replies, no website scripting |
| GitHub API for 10 repos | Data | Stars, licence, last push → x-repos.md |
| Social Media Today on a Buffer study | Third party | "Premium ≈ 10× reach" claim; not used as fact (correlation, not X data) |
| Third-party Premium guides (tweetarchivist, autotweet, tryordinal) | Third party | Only to cross-check; they disagreed with each other on tier details, so the help page wins |
Findings¶
- Ranking is personal and prediction-based. Weights multiply each viewer's predicted probability, not raw counts.
- Conversation and shares beat likes. Copy-link share 20, reply/quote/DM share 5, like 0.5.
- Negative feedback is expensive. Not interested −47.5, mute −58.8, report −234.
- Two-day life. Posts older than 48 hours leave For You.
- Premium's documented growth lever is reply prioritization, larger on higher tiers. Nothing in the code shows Premium boosting original posts in For You.
- Repos: the best-maintained X writing skill is
sergebulaev/x-skills(MIT); general marketing at scale iscoreyhaines31/marketingskills(54k stars). Several small X repos scrape the website, which breaks X's rules. - First dollar depends more on the profile → landing → trial chain than on post volume.
Not verified (don't quote as fact)¶
- Best posting times, hashtag penalties, exact link-post penalties.
- Production values of the ranker weights (the repo shows defaults).
- Creator Subscriptions eligibility thresholds (the help page for it returned 404 on 2026-10-11; check the Monetization tab in the app).
Output of this research¶
Skills: social-x-growth, social-x-reply, social-x-profile-funnel. Docs: ../docs/.