Most engineers ship something, merge it, and move on. Nobody hears about it. A good announcement takes five minutes and does three things: the right people learn the thing exists, the people who helped get credit, and you have a record of it for your next review.
Template 1: Slack, for your team
*[What shipped, in plain words] is live.* [One line on who it's for or where to find it.]
[Why it matters: the problem it solves, ideally with a number.]
[What changes for the reader, if anything: a new flag, a new workflow, something to try.]
Thanks to @[name] for [specific help] and @[name] for [specific help].
[Link to the PR, doc, or demo]Example:
*Apple Pay is live in web and iOS checkout.* It's on for everyone as of this morning.
We rolled it out behind a flag and went to 100% once the error rate stayed flat for a week.
If you see a checkout error with "merchant validation" in it, send it to #payments-oncall.
Thanks to @dana for the Safari token fix and @lee for the QA pass.
[link to PR]Template 2: LinkedIn, for everyone else
[One sentence in your own words: why you built this, or the moment that made it necessary.]
[The problem, for someone outside your team, in one or two sentences.]
[What you built. One concrete detail that makes it real.]
[One decision or lesson: what you tried first, what you changed, why.]
[What's next, or where to try it.]
[Demo video or screenshot]The first line matters most, and it's the one only you can write. It should sound like you talking, not like a press release.
What makes people scroll past
- Leading with the team or the tech stack. Lead with what changed for someone.
- "Excited to announce." Everyone is. Say the thing.
- No specifics. "Improved performance" is noise. "Scans now take 0.3 seconds on a five-year-old phone" is a post.
- No credit. Naming who helped is the part people remember, and it costs nothing.
- Internal jargon on LinkedIn. Your ticket names mean nothing outside the building.
Checklist before you post
- [ ] First line says what shipped, in plain words
- [ ] One real number, if you have one
- [ ] What the reader should do, if anything
- [ ] Named thanks
- [ ] A link or a demo
Drafting it from the work itself
The facts for an announcement are already in your pull requests and, if you use Claude Code, in the sessions where you built it: what you tried, what broke, what you decided. Shabash turns a finished thread of work into a draft Slack message or LinkedIn post built from those sessions and commits. You write the first line; it fills in the facts, with the source behind each one, and never invents a number.