SDK Time to Hello World: Where Evaluations Actually Die

Install, authenticate, make one real call, read a useful response. Analytics often starts at signup. The developer who never creates an account because npx failed is invisible. So is the one who authenticated and then hit a 401 on the sample.

Time to hello world is the clock from the first command in your quickstart to the first successful response. If that clock stops, the reason should be an error code you already named, not a guess in a sales call.

Token URLs, redirect mismatches, device-code expiry, and a Compose file that needs more memory than a laptop will give it. These are not edge cases. They are the first hour. Anyone who fails there will not email you.

Put the probe on those steps. Keep the stack. Ask what they were trying to do. A pattern of 'staging' plus ERR_DOCKER_OOM is a docs change, not a personality problem.

Sample apps that catch errors and render a blank screen teach the developer that your product does nothing. Let the error show, with the code and the next command, and send the same payload to your inbox.

If the sample only works on your machine, say which ports, which CLI version, and which env vars. Hidden assumptions are drop-off.

Sort probes by error code for the last seven days. The code with the most unique developers is the step to rewrite. Ship the doc, the default, or the memory limit the same day.

A green product dashboard does not mean the first hour worked. It means the people who finished it are using the product. The rest never became users.