Directory backlinks are dead. Directory profiles are what AI reads now.
Every launch checklist still says submit to 100+ directories. That advice inverted. Directory profiles are now a source LLMs read when deciding what to recommend, so a listing you abandoned two years ago is actively selling a product you no longer sell. distribution-launcher plans the directory layer of a launch around fewer listings, kept current, and refuses to let you submit before you are ready.
For founders and operators shipping a web product — who are about to spend a launch week filling in forms that will outlive the product they describe.
opvs-skills install @di-atomic/distribution-launcherThen say: “we launch next week — where should I list this?”
Why more directories is the wrong goal
> submit to 100+ directories [ ] paste the same 150-word blurb [ ] into every form you can find [ ] never open the profile again (2 years later you pivot. 94 profiles still describe the old product. Nothing expires. Nothing notifies you.)
Free backlinks, so why not. That logic held while a listing was inert. Now each one is a page an AI can read and cite about you.
productCategory: "agent-mcp" hasMCP: true locales: ["en","de"] → 18 relevant of 72 ✓ tier 1,2,4 → per-tier positioning, 6 variants → phase-0 gate: 7 hard / 2 soft → freshness: 72/72 within 180d → log each submission to the board
Filtered by what your product actually is, framed differently per tier, and blocked until the assets a directory will reject you for actually exist.
30 listings you keep current beat 100 you abandon. The second number is worse than doing nothing.
What you actually get
A registry, not a memory
72 directories across 7 tiers and 8 locales, each with its submission URL, free or paid status, DR estimate, category restrictions and a lastVerified date. Your agent filters it instead of recalling directory names from training data.
A gate before the first form
Nine readiness items, seven of them hard blocks: reachable product, pricing page, privacy and terms, logo assets in every shape, real screenshots and a demo, sane heading and schema markup, indexed alternative pages. A rejected submission costs more than a delayed one.
Freshness as a hard check
verify-registry-freshness.mjs enforces a 180-day window at an 85% fresh floor and exits non-zero on a stale set. On the shipped registry: 72 of 72 fresh, HEALTHY, exit 0. A number you can run, not a promise.
The two habits it exists to break
The gate that runs before you fill anything in
> readiness check — ai-scheduler launch
verify-readiness ............ ABORT 2/7 hard items pass
no pricing page (hard)
no square logo / favicon (hard)
3 alternative pages not indexed (hard)
<20 beta reviewers (soft — proceed)
→ build the missing three, re-run
verify-readiness ............ PASS 9/9
verify-positioning-variants . PASS 6/6 — per-tier framing, unique, within char limits
verify-registry-freshness ... PASS 72/72 fresh (100%), HEALTHY, exit 0
→ tier 1 batch queued, each submission logged to the board
Deterministic scripts, not a model grading its own plan. The same verifiers fail loudly on a bad fixture — a gate that never fails is decoration.
Where it stops
I built this by dogfooding the same stack I run for clients.
distribution-launcher is one skill in the system behind Di-Atomic — the marketing & compliance agency that runs cognitoAI, SpiderIQ and OPVS. If you want a launch that puts your product in the places that still matter, in any of our seven languages, and keeps those listings current so AI keeps recommending what you actually sell today — that’s the day job. Let’s talk.
Book a 30-min call with Di-AtomicJust want the skill? Install @di-atomic/distribution-launcher free.