Support Deflection for Developer Tools Starts at the Error

A developer with a failing CLI pastes the code into a search box. If the code is unique and the first result is your doc, you deflected the ticket. If the message says 'unexpected error,' they email you or they leave. Both are expensive.

Write the doc URL into the stderr line. Keep the URL stable when you rewrite the paragraph. Broken hint links are how deflection dies.

A message that tells them to retry forever has deflected the conversation and kept the bug. Track how often each code still produces a probe after the hint shipped. If the probe count does not fall, the hint is wrong.

The probes that remain are your real queue. They are the cases the docs did not cover: a proxy, an expired org policy, a sample that assumes Docker Desktop.

When someone does write in, the agent should see the command and the sentence you already captured. Asking them to re-paste the stack is how you lose the thread.

Draft the GitHub issue from that record. Support sends it or closes it with the doc link. They should not retype stderr into a form.

A deflected code is one whose unique-developer count drops in the week after the doc or the default changes. A code that stays flat is a product gap wearing a help-center costume.

That is a harder metric than ticket volume, and it is the one your ICP already feels. They are tired of boards that celebrate fewer tickets while adoption stalls.