Cheap Seats

A read-only copy of Cheap Seats measuring itself, updated hourly. Run your own.

Quick wins

The fix lists from the latest run of every prompt set, core sets first, then fastest expected ranking gain: prompts a fix could flip per working day, each weighted by what it has left to win (one minus its recommended rate over the last two weeks; named, for an info prompt). Mark a fix with the commit or pull request you submitted for it; open leaves out the ones you have. A later fix for the same page stays open, with what was tried before.

Statusall 9open 5accepted 4

Priorityall 11urgent 4high 7

Siteall 4elsewhere 4

Gapall 4documentation 4

Setall 4Finding out whether AI assistants recommend us 2Open-source and self-hosted AI visibility 2

Publish popcorn.zone/docs/guides/benchmark-against-competitors on share-of-voice rank accepted urgent documentation effort S flips 3 Finding out whether AI assistants recommend us

Where: popcorn.zone/docs/guides/benchmark-against-competitors
Must say: Explain how to benchmark against competitors. Popcorn records every product named in each answer, computes each prompt set's share-of-voice rank and recommended/mentioned rates day by day, and keeps the answers and citations behind each number. Include a worked example showing the competitor table and the rank trend, and explain why comparing top-pick counts on the same prompt set is the fair benchmark.
Done when: A re-run of prompt 9 or 6 names Popcorn or cites this page.
Displaces: https://help.peec.ai/article/decision-lab-what-is-share-of-voice-and-how-is-it-calculated-23
Why: P9: top picks were Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch and Peec AI across the search answers.

Prompt for Claude Code
# Publish popcorn.zone/docs/guides/benchmark-against-competitors on share-of-voice rank

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a documentation gap: the answer needed a page we don't have, or ours says the wrong thing.

## The questions it affects
- Is there a way to measure our share of voice in AI chatbot answers?
- What's the best way to benchmark my brand's visibility in LLM answers against competitors?
- What metrics should a marketing team use to measure presence in AI assistant answers?

## What the assistant said
P9: top picks were Profound, Peec AI, Scrunch and Peec AI across the search answers.

## Who wins the question today
https://help.peec.ai/article/decision-lab-what-is-share-of-voice-and-how-is-it-calculated-23. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at popcorn.zone/docs/guides/benchmark-against-competitors so it closes this gap. Find where pages like this live in the repo, match their structure, front matter and tone, and make the change there. If the page exists, edit it rather than starting over.

## What it must say
Explain how to benchmark against competitors. Popcorn records every product named in each answer, computes each prompt set's share-of-voice rank and recommended/mentioned rates day by day, and keeps the answers and citations behind each number. Include a worked example showing the competitor table and the rank trend, and explain why comparing top-pick counts on the same prompt set is the fair benchmark.

## Done when
A re-run of prompt 9 or 6 names Popcorn or cites this page.

## Rules
- Don't invent numbers, benchmarks, prices, capabilities or customer names. Where a fact is needed and you can't find it in the repo or on our site, leave a clearly marked TODO saying exactly what to measure or who to ask.
- Answer the questions above directly and early on the page, in the words buyers use. AI assistants quote pages that state the answer plainly.
- Keep it scoped to this one fix. When you're done, summarise what you changed and list any TODOs.

accepted https://github.com/metcalfc/popcorn-site/pull/13 · guides/benchmark-against-competitors (the fix said docs/guides/; guides live at /guides/): share of voice and rank from report.go, daily trend rules from history.go, worked example from run r-20261022-043101-41215d mcp 2026-10-22 05:20:23
pending: the set hasn't run since

From this run

Publish popcorn.zone/blog/ai-visibility-tools-compared: Popcorn vs Peec, Profound, Otterly, Scrunch accepted urgent documentation effort M flips 6 Finding out whether AI assistants recommend us

Where: popcorn.zone/blog/ai-visibility-tools-compared
Must say: Compare Popcorn with Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush AI Visibility row by row. Popcorn's rows: MIT licensed and self-hosted (one Docker container with SQLite); TOML prompt sets in your own git repo; Claude and OpenAI via API or local Claude Code/Codex CLIs; separate search and recall tracks; recommended/mentioned/absent grading with position, top pick, share of voice and objections; a ranked fix list; a daily budget cap. Confirm competitor engines and pricing from their own pages, and date the table. The homepage 'alternative to Peec AI and Profound' line is still pending, but a tagline cannot be cited as a comparison, so this page has to exist separately.
Done when: On a re-run of prompts 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 12, at least one search answer names Popcorn or cites this page.
Displaces: https://rankability.com/blog/best-ai-search-visibility-tracking-tools/
Why: P5 search answers were shaped by tryprofound.com, peec.ai, otterly.ai and scrunch.com. 'Popcorn pages seen: NONE.'

Prompt for Claude Code
# Publish popcorn.zone/blog/ai-visibility-tools-compared: Popcorn vs Peec, Profound, Otterly, Scrunch

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a documentation gap: the answer needed a page we don't have, or ours says the wrong thing.

## The questions it affects
- How can I find out whether ChatGPT recommends my product when people ask about my category?
- What tools track how often AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini mention a brand?
- Is there a way to measure our share of voice in AI chatbot answers?
- How do I monitor whether AI search engines cite our website?
- What's the best way to benchmark my brand's visibility in LLM answers against competitors?
- How can I see which web pages AI assistants rely on when they answer questions in my category?

## What the assistant said
P5 search answers were shaped by tryprofound.com, peec.ai, otterly.ai and scrunch.com. 'Popcorn pages seen: NONE.'

## Who wins the question today
https://rankability.com/blog/best-ai-search-visibility-tracking-tools/. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at popcorn.zone/blog/ai-visibility-tools-compared so it closes this gap. Find where pages like this live in the repo, match their structure, front matter and tone, and make the change there. If the page exists, edit it rather than starting over.

## What it must say
Compare Popcorn with Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush AI Visibility row by row. Popcorn's rows: MIT licensed and self-hosted (one Docker container with SQLite); TOML prompt sets in your own git repo; Claude and OpenAI via API or local Claude Code/Codex CLIs; separate search and recall tracks; recommended/mentioned/absent grading with position, top pick, share of voice and objections; a ranked fix list; a daily budget cap. Confirm competitor engines and pricing from their own pages, and date the table. The homepage 'alternative to Peec AI and Profound' line is still pending, but a tagline cannot be cited as a comparison, so this page has to exist separately.

## Done when
On a re-run of prompts 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 12, at least one search answer names Popcorn or cites this page.

## Rules
- Don't invent numbers, benchmarks, prices, capabilities or customer names. Where a fact is needed and you can't find it in the repo or on our site, leave a clearly marked TODO saying exactly what to measure or who to ask.
- Answer the questions above directly and early on the page, in the words buyers use. AI assistants quote pages that state the answer plainly.
- Keep it scoped to this one fix. When you're done, summarise what you changed and list any TODOs.

accepted https://github.com/metcalfc/popcorn-site/pull/15 · blog/ai-visibility-tools-compared: Popcorn vs Peec AI, Profound, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, Ahrefs Brand Radar and Semrush row by row, dated, linking the /compare/ pages mcp 2026-10-22 05:22:35
pending: the set hasn't run since

From this run

Publish popcorn.zone/blog/popcorn-vs-promptfoo explaining eval harness vs visibility grader accepted urgent documentation effort S flips 5 Open-source and self-hosted AI visibility

Where: popcorn.zone/blog/popcorn-vs-promptfoo
Must say: Promptfoo is the assistants' default recall answer, so position Popcorn against it. Explain that Promptfoo is a general LLM eval tool, while Popcorn is built for brand visibility. Popcorn grades each answer recommended, mentioned or absent, records position, top pick, share of voice and objections, and builds a ranked fix list naming the page, the claim and the prompts it should flip.
Done when: Rerun prompts 11 and 16 on search. Popcorn is named alongside or above Promptfoo in at least one answer.
Displaces: https://github.com/promptfoo/promptfoo
Why: P16: top pick promptfoo on both the recall and search answers from claude-code-opus

Prompt for Claude Code
# Publish popcorn.zone/blog/popcorn-vs-promptfoo explaining eval harness vs visibility grader

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a documentation gap: the answer needed a page we don't have, or ours says the wrong thing.

## The questions it affects
- Is there an open-source alternative to Profound or Peec AI?
- Is there a self-hosted AI visibility tracker I can run in Docker?
- What's a good open-source way for a developer-tools startup to check whether AI assistants recommend it over alternatives?
- Can I test the same buyer questions against several AI models and compare the answers?
- How do engineering-led companies measure whether LLMs recommend their product, without a marketing tool?

## What the assistant said
P16: top pick promptfoo on both the recall and search answers from claude-code-opus

## Who wins the question today
https://github.com/promptfoo/promptfoo. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at popcorn.zone/blog/popcorn-vs-promptfoo so it closes this gap. Find where pages like this live in the repo, match their structure, front matter and tone, and make the change there. If the page exists, edit it rather than starting over.

## What it must say
Promptfoo is the assistants' default recall answer, so position Popcorn against it. Explain that Promptfoo is a general LLM eval tool, while Popcorn is built for brand visibility. Popcorn grades each answer recommended, mentioned or absent, records position, top pick, share of voice and objections, and builds a ranked fix list naming the page, the claim and the prompts it should flip.

## Done when
Rerun prompts 11 and 16 on search. Popcorn is named alongside or above Promptfoo in at least one answer.

## Rules
- Don't invent numbers, benchmarks, prices, capabilities or customer names. Where a fact is needed and you can't find it in the repo or on our site, leave a clearly marked TODO saying exactly what to measure or who to ask.
- Answer the questions above directly and early on the page, in the words buyers use. AI assistants quote pages that state the answer plainly.
- Keep it scoped to this one fix. When you're done, summarise what you changed and list any TODOs.

accepted https://github.com/metcalfc/popcorn-site/pull/12 · blog/popcorn-vs-promptfoo: answers the questions up front, fair comparison sourced from Promptfoo's own docs, what you'd build on Promptfoo, when to use it instead mcp 2026-10-22 05:20:22
pending: the set hasn't run since

From this run

Publish popcorn.zone/docs/self-hosting with Docker, Helm/Kubernetes and exe.dev install accepted urgent documentation effort S flips 4 Open-source and self-hosted AI visibility

Where: popcorn.zone/docs/self-hosting
Must say: Give a copy-paste `docker run` command, a Helm install for Kubernetes, and exe.dev VM steps. State that it is a single container with a SQLite file. State that prompts and answers go only to the model providers you configure, so no third-party SaaS vendor sees your data. Title and H1 should read 'Self-hosted AI visibility tracker: Docker and Kubernetes'.
Done when: Rerun prompts 5 and 6 on search. Popcorn's docs page appears among the sources, and at least one answer names Popcorn as its Docker or Kubernetes pick.
Displaces: https://github.com/elmohq/elmo
Why: P6: top pick Gego, from hub.docker.com/r/ouai2h/gego, with no Popcorn page seen

Prompt for Claude Code
# Publish popcorn.zone/docs/self-hosting with Docker, Helm/Kubernetes and exe.dev install

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a documentation gap: the answer needed a page we don't have, or ours says the wrong thing.

## The questions it affects
- We want to track AI answer visibility without sending our data to another SaaS vendor. What are our options?
- Is there a self-hosted AI visibility tracker I can run in Docker?
- Can we run an AI search visibility tracker on our own Kubernetes cluster?
- What's the cheapest way to track our brand in AI answers ourselves instead of paying for a SaaS subscription?

## What the assistant said
P6: top pick Gego, from hub.docker.com/r/ouai2h/gego, with no Popcorn page seen

## Who wins the question today
https://github.com/elmohq/elmo. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at popcorn.zone/docs/self-hosting so it closes this gap. Find where pages like this live in the repo, match their structure, front matter and tone, and make the change there. If the page exists, edit it rather than starting over.

## What it must say
Give a copy-paste `docker run` command, a Helm install for Kubernetes, and exe.dev VM steps. State that it is a single container with a SQLite file. State that prompts and answers go only to the model providers you configure, so no third-party SaaS vendor sees your data. Title and H1 should read 'Self-hosted AI visibility tracker: Docker and Kubernetes'.

## Done when
Rerun prompts 5 and 6 on search. Popcorn's docs page appears among the sources, and at least one answer names Popcorn as its Docker or Kubernetes pick.

## Rules
- Don't invent numbers, benchmarks, prices, capabilities or customer names. Where a fact is needed and you can't find it in the repo or on our site, leave a clearly marked TODO saying exactly what to measure or who to ask.
- Answer the questions above directly and early on the page, in the words buyers use. AI assistants quote pages that state the answer plainly.
- Keep it scoped to this one fix. When you're done, summarise what you changed and list any TODOs.

accepted https://github.com/metcalfc/popcorn-site/pull/11 · docs/self-hosting: Docker (published image, command tested), Helm (chart rendered), exe.dev, data flow verified in code, free to run locally or pay your host mcp 2026-10-22 05:20:22
pending: the set hasn't run since

From this run