port-daddy-users

license	Apache-2.0
name	port-daddy-users
description	Library of 24 named, textured Port Daddy user personas (solo/indie developers, small teams, big-team engineers, enterprise decision-makers, hiring managers evaluating Erich Owens/Curiositech, friends of Erich, AI power-users, curious newcomers, and one adversarial skeptic) for use as test subjects in UX friction audits and product appeal analysis. Activate on "who would find this confusing", "test this against real users", "persona", "target audience", "who is this for", "would an enterprise buyer trust this", "would a hiring manager be impressed". NOT for abstract job-story/opportunity mapping (use agentic-coding-product-research), running the actual friction/appeal scoring (use ux-friction-analyzer / product-appeal-analyzer), or real user research/interviews (personas are stand-ins, not a substitute for talking to actual users).
allowed-tools	Read,Grep,Glob
metadata	{"category":"Content & Marketing","tags":["personas","user-research","ux","product-appeal","port-daddy"],"provenance":{"kind":"first-party","owners":["port-daddy"]},"pairs-with":[{"skill":"ux-friction-analyzer","reason":"Supplies the concrete named personas whose journeys get simulated during a friction audit — this skill answers \"who\", ux-friction-analyzer answers \"where do they get stuck\"."},{"skill":"product-appeal-analyzer","reason":"Directly satisfies that skill's `target-personas` (markdown) input — the Desirability Triangle and 5-second test are scored per persona from this catalog."},{"skill":"agentic-coding-product-research","reason":"That skill's own audience-stories reference holds 5 abstract job-story segments (Solo Founder, Staff Engineer, Enterprise Admin, OSS Maintainer, Agent Power User); this skill's 24 named personas are concrete instances within those segments, with the addition of non-engineering audiences (hiring managers, friends, curious newcomers) that the abstract segments don't cover."}],"io-contract":{"kind":"deliverable","consumes":[],"produces":["[Truncated]","[Truncated]"]}}

Port Daddy Users

A catalog of 24 named personas standing in for Port Daddy's real audience spectrum — from a solo indie hacker running brew install at midnight, to an enterprise security officer reading the license file, to a friend of Erich's clicking the link because they were texted it. Use these as test subjects: walk a proposed change, page, or flow through 4-8 relevant personas and see where each one gets confused, bored, impressed, or suspicious.

Core insight: Port Daddy is not one product to one audience. The same install script reads as "finally, zero-config" to a solo dev and "who signs off on this touching my ports and network?" to an enterprise security reviewer. A change that delights one segment can be invisible or actively alarming to another — the point of this catalog is to make that visible before shipping, not after.

When to Use

✅ Use for:

• Selecting which personas to run through ux-friction-analyzer or product-appeal-analyzer for a given surface (landing page, install flow, CLI onboarding, README, pricing/licensing, FleetBar UI)
• Sanity-checking a product/messaging decision against "would X actually feel this, or am I only imagining my own reaction?"
• Stress-testing claims and copy against a persona built to be skeptical (Victor)
• Framing a README/repo as a "hire me" signal for hiring-manager personas

❌ NOT for:

• Abstract job-story/opportunity mapping → use agentic-coding-product-research's own audience-stories reference
• Actually scoring friction or appeal → use ux-friction-analyzer / product-appeal-analyzer; this skill only supplies the "who," not the scoring method
• A substitute for real user research — these are synthetic stand-ins for triage and pre-mortems, not evidence. If a decision is expensive or irreversible, validate with actual users before shipping.

How to Use This Skill

flowchart TD
    A[Surface or decision to evaluate] --> B{What kind of surface?}
    B -->|Landing page / first impression| C[references/personas.md: Curious Newcomers + Skeptic + AI Power-Users]
    B -->|Install flow / CLI onboarding| D[references/personas.md: Solo/Indie + Enterprise Engineers]
    B -->|Pricing / licensing / legal| E[references/personas.md: Enterprise Decision-Makers]
    B -->|README / repo as portfolio| F[references/personas.md: Hiring Managers]
    B -->|Multi-agent fleet / FleetBar UX| G[references/personas.md: AI Power-Users + Team Leads]
    B -->|General trust / credibility check| H[references/personas.md: Friends + Skeptic + Enterprise]
    C & D & E & F & G & H --> I[Pick 4-8 personas, not all 24 — dilution kills signal]
    I --> J[Feed selected persona profiles into ux-friction-analyzer / product-appeal-analyzer as target-personas input]
    J --> K[Synthesize: where do reactions diverge sharply across segments?]
    K --> L[Divergence = the real design decision to make explicit, not paper over]