We unbroke it!

_{Day 43/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

What went live

Clusters is back

Drop in a target keyword. We suggest ~20 supporting topics. You pick 4-16. We write them all, interlink everything automatically, and build a hub guide that ties it together.

Total topic coverage in one afternoon instead of one quarter.

BoFu got smarter

Completely rewrote how we scrape competitor pages and collect data. Also rebuilt all the content prompts to work with our new agentic process.

Translation: BoFu now generates bottom-of-funnel content that actually sounds like you're selling something instead of writing an encyclopedia entry.

Both are live in all paid accounts now.

What's shipping this week

Echo is getting fixed

If you're new: Echo is how we write like you actually write.

You bring 4-8 articles you've published. Penny analyzes them and creates an "echo-print" - your sentence patterns, your rhythm, your weird punctuation habits, all of it.

Then every post we generate matches that voice instead of sounding like ChatGPT ate a marketing textbook.

Echo broke when we launched Wave One. We're rebuilding it to work with the new system. Should be back live by end of week.

What that means for Wave One cleanup

When we shipped the new core Penfriend functionality a month ago, we broke three things:

1. Clusters (fixed, live now)

2. BoFu (fixed, live now)

3. Echo (fixing this week)

Once Echo is back, everything that worked before Wave One will work again - but better, because it all runs on the new system.

Then we can actually move forward instead of playing catch-up.

What's next: Wave 2 in 3 weeks

An editor that actually gives a shit if humans will read what you wrote.

The problem we're solving

Right now, every content tool optimizes for robots.

"Add this keyword 7 times."
"Your meta description is 3 characters too long."
"H2 should be 60-70 characters."

Cool. Now you rank on page one and nobody reads past the first paragraph because it's boring as hell.

We fixed half of this in Wave 1 - the SEO score tells you what robots need to see for you to rank.

Wave 2 is the other half: knowing if what you wrote actually works for humans.

What's shipping: VIBE score + editor feedback

VIBE Score

This is the "will humans actually read this?" metric.

It analyzes:

• Sentence rhythm and pacing

• Whether you're being specific or hiding behind vague bullshit

• If your intros hook or put people to sleep

• Readability without dumbing things down

• Whether you sound like you or like ChatGPT ate a marketing textbook

You get a score. If it's low, you know you need to rewrite before publishing.

The goal: stop shipping content that ranks but nobody finishes reading.

Editor Comments (Left Margin Feedback)

This is the part I use every single day now.

As you write, Penfriend drops comments in the left margin. Like having an actual editor sitting next to you.

Real examples from this morning:

• "This paragraph is doing three jobs. Pick one."

• "You introduced a concept but never explained it. Either define it or cut it."

• "This transition feels like you just slapped two emails together."

The kind you'd get from a senior editor if you had one on payroll.

I've been using the WIP version for two weeks. It's made me a better writer. Not because it fixes things for me - because it points out where I'm being lazy.

Why this matters more now than 6 months ago

LLMs are getting closer to human-quality writing every day.

The gap between "AI wrote this" and "a human wrote this" is shrinking fast.

Which means the content that wins won't be "AI vs. human." It'll be "boring vs. worth reading."

You need to know which side you're on before you hit publish.

That's what VIBE score tells you.

And the editor comments? They're training wheels. Use them for a few weeks and you'll start catching those issues yourself.

Why I'm telling you this

Transparency over polish.

We could wait until everything's perfect and ship a beautiful announcement. But you're using this tool every day. You deserve to know what's working, what's broken, and what we're fixing.

Back to building.

✌️ Tim "VIBE CHECK" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. The editor comments are my favorite part. Not because they're always right—but because they force me to defend my choices. "Is this paragraph actually doing something or am I just scared of white space?" Most of the time, it's the latter.

P.P.S. The +50% extra credits still works on all paid plans, because someone forgot to change it…

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