What's the one onboarding "hook" that made you try a new tool?

3•gbukat•2mo ago

I’m building a small monitoring and task automation tool, I’d love to learn from you:

What’s the one thing during onboarding that made you actually give a new tool a try?

Was it a pre-filled demo with fake data? A “1-click” setup? Importing from Prometheus or Grafana? Or maybe just really good defaults and copy that made it feel effortless?

I’m especially curious how developers and ops teams decide if something is worth testing. Would love to hear your examples — good or bad — of onboarding moments that worked.

Comments

rolph•2mo ago

portable app, no internet required, is what gets me onboard.

gbukat•2mo ago

Thanks!

amacalac•2mo ago

Show value in as little steps as possible.

If it needs access to my real system data, tell me why, and guide me through the all steps I need to complete to set it up.

Write out every step. Make it obvious. Come back to your instructions the next day and make them simpler, and more obvious.

Have as few steps as possible.

Time to value is key here.

gbukat•2mo ago

Thank you!

greenstalk•2mo ago

"This tool does exactly one thing well, and uses no extra permissions/libraries/network access to get there."

I also put a lot of value on a well designed CLI. A GUI should not be required for anything.

Study confirms experience beats youthful enthusiasm

The Big Hunger by Walter J Miller, Jr. (1952)

The Genus Amanita

We have broken SHA-1 in practice

Ask HN: Was my first management job bad, or is this what management is like?

Ask HN: How to Reduce Time Spent Crimping?

KV Cache Transform Coding for Compact Storage in LLM Inference

A quantitative, multimodal wearable bioelectronic device for stress assessment

Why Big Tech Is Throwing Cash into India in Quest for AI Supremacy

How to shoot yourself in the foot – 2026 edition

Eight More Months of Agents

From Human Thought to Machine Coordination

The new X API pricing must be a joke

Show HN: RMA Dashboard fast SAST results for monorepos (SARIF and triage)

Show HN: Source code graphRAG for Java/Kotlin development based on jQAssistant

Python Only Has One Real Competitor

Tmux to Zellij (and Back)

Ask HN: How are you using specialized agents to accelerate your work?

Passing user_id through 6 services? OTel Baggage fixes this

DavMail Pop/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP Exchange Gateway

Visual data modelling in the browser (open source)

Show HN: Tharos – CLI to find and autofix security bugs using local LLMs

Oddly Simple GUI Programs

The New Playbook for Leaders [pdf]

Interactive Unboxing of J Dilla's Donuts

OneCourt helps blind and low-vision fans to track Super Bowl live

Rudolf Vrba

Autism Incidence in Girls and Boys May Be Nearly Equal, Study Suggests

Wellness Hotels Discovery Application

NASA delays moon rocket launch by a month after fuel leaks during test