Quick wins

# Get cheapseats.dev indexed: sitemap to Bing/Google, llms.txt, 301s from popcorn.zone

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
- Cheap Seats vs Profound for tracking whether AI assistants recommend us: which should I pick?
- Cheap Seats or Peec AI for a small marketing team?
- Cheap Seats vs Otterly.AI for a startup that wants to track AI visibility cheaply?
- How does Cheap Seats compare with Gauge for tracking and improving AI visibility?
- Cheap Seats or Semrush AI Toolkit for tracking our brand in ChatGPT and Claude?
- Is Cheap Seats a good open-source alternative to paid AI visibility tools?
- What are the downsides of self-hosting Cheap Seats to measure AI search visibility?
- How does Cheap Seats decide whether an AI assistant recommended a brand?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for an agency tracking AI visibility for many clients?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for a developer-tools company checking whether ChatGPT and Claude recommend it?
- What does it cost to run Cheap Seats every day, and how do I keep the spend under control?

## What the assistant said
"it found no identifiable official site or documentation for the product" (P1, codex-sol search)

## Your task
Write or update the page at https://cheapseats.dev/sitemap.xml 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
Every earlier indexing fix targeted popcorn.zone, the old name, so none of them can help cheapseats.dev. In the data, no search answer cited cheapseats.dev on any prompt. Submit https://cheapseats.dev/sitemap.xml, covering /, /docs and /blog, to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, and add /llms.txt plus SoftwareApplication JSON-LD (MIT license, Docker, self-hosted). Then 301 popcorn.zone/* and github.com/metcalfc/cheapseats to the matching cheapseats.dev or cheapseatsdev URLs, and set the GitHub repo's About website field to https://cheapseats.dev.

## Done when
Bing and Google both report cheapseats.dev pages indexed, and on a re-run at least 3 of the 11 codex-sol search answers cite a cheapseats.dev URL.

## 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.

# Rewrite cheapseatsdev/cheapseats README top: coverage, cost, grading, docs link

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
- Cheap Seats vs Profound for tracking whether AI assistants recommend us: which should I pick?
- Cheap Seats vs Otterly.AI for a startup that wants to track AI visibility cheaply?
- How does Cheap Seats compare with Gauge for tracking and improving AI visibility?
- Is Cheap Seats a good open-source alternative to paid AI visibility tools?
- What are the downsides of self-hosting Cheap Seats to measure AI search visibility?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for an agency tracking AI visibility for many clients?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for a developer-tools company checking whether ChatGPT and Claude recommend it?

## What the assistant said
"very new", has "0 GitHub stars, no releases yet", tracks only Claude and ChatGPT (P3, claude-code-opus search)

## Your task
Write or update the page at https://github.com/cheapseatsdev/cheapseats (README.md, About, Releases) 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
The repo is the only Cheap Seats page assistants find, and when they find it they recommend it (P1, P4, P6 search). Yet they report "0 stars, no releases" and "Claude and ChatGPT only" with no context. The first screen of the README must state:
- what it does: asks buyer questions on a search and a recall track, grades recommended/mentioned/absent, and builds a ranked fix list naming page, claim, prompts and owner;
- cost: free under MIT, you pay only API usage under a daily budget cap, or use existing Claude Code/Codex subscriptions;
- coverage: Claude and OpenAI models only;
- links to cheapseats.dev/docs and /compare.
Also cut a tagged release with notes, add the topics ai-visibility, ai-visibility-tracking, geo and aeo, and note the rename from Popcorn.

## Done when
On a re-run, no search answer that cites the repo says "no releases", and every answer citing it states the cost model and the coverage correctly.

## 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.

# Publish cheapseats.dev/docs/costs with measured per-run spend and daily budget cap config

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
- Cheap Seats or Peec AI for a small marketing team?
- Cheap Seats vs Otterly.AI for a startup that wants to track AI visibility cheaply?
- Cheap Seats or Semrush AI Toolkit for tracking our brand in ChatGPT and Claude?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for an agency tracking AI visibility for many clients?
- What does it cost to run Cheap Seats every day, and how do I keep the spend under control?

## What the assistant said
"no authoritative public pricing found" (P11, codex-sol search)

## Who wins the question today
https://otterly.ai/pricing. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at https://cheapseats.dev/docs/costs 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
Port the popcorn.zone cost page, which was never crawled. The new page must give measured spend for a stated prompt set: prompts × 2 tracks × models × runs per day, with the dollar figure from a real run (measure this first). It must show the daily budget cap config and explain the subscription path: local Claude Code or Codex CLIs on your own plans. End with a worked example that a startup can compare against Otterly Lite or Peec Starter pricing.

## Done when
On a re-run of P11, at least 2 answers give a Cheap Seats-specific daily cost and name the budget cap, and P3 search answers stop saying its cost is unverifiable.

## 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.

# Publish cheapseats.dev/docs/how-grading-works: 3 grades, 2 tracks, raw answers kept

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
- Cheap Seats vs Otterly.AI for a startup that wants to track AI visibility cheaply?
- Is Cheap Seats a good open-source alternative to paid AI visibility tools?
- What are the downsides of self-hosting Cheap Seats to measure AI search visibility?
- How does Cheap Seats decide whether an AI assistant recommended a brand?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for a developer-tools company checking whether ChatGPT and Claude recommend it?

## What the assistant said
"I'm not going to guess at its method" (P8, claude-code-opus search)

## Who wins the question today
https://github.com/topics/ai-visibility-tracking?o=desc&s=stars. Read it and make sure our version answers everything it does, better.

## Your task
Write or update the page at https://cheapseats.dev/docs/how-grading-works 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
Port the popcorn.zone grading page to cheapseats.dev. It must define the three grades: recommended, mentioned and absent. It must explain what else each answer records: position, top pick, every product named (for share of voice) and the objections raised. It must describe the two tracks: search, where the assistant must search the web first, and recall, with no tools. Finally, state that every answer, search result and citation is kept, so the raw answers are always inspectable. That answers P10's condition that the tool "exposes the underlying answers" and P3/P6's "API answers aren't what users see".

## Done when
On a re-run of P8, at least 2 of 4 answers describe the three grades and the two tracks and cite cheapseats.dev.

## 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.

# Get Cheap Seats listed on openalternative.co AI visibility tracking category

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a third-party gap: the roundups and comparisons the model reads leave us out.

## The questions it affects
- Is Cheap Seats a good open-source alternative to paid AI visibility tools?
- Is Cheap Seats a good fit for a developer-tools company checking whether ChatGPT and Claude recommend it?

## What the assistant said
"couldn't identify a matching AI visibility project"; steered to "self-hosted Aperture" (P6, codex-sol search)

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

## Your task
We need to be included on https://openalternative.co/categories/ai-visibility-tracking. Read that page first, work out the right way in (editor contact, submission form, PR, comments), and draft exactly what to send: a short, factual pitch covering the points below, in the page's own format.

## What it must say
P6's open-source search answer drew on openalternative.co and GitHub topic pages, and Aperture won the 'identifiable MIT alternative' slot. Submit Cheap Seats as an open-source alternative to Profound, Peec AI and Otterly in the AI visibility tracking category. The listing should say: MIT license, single Docker container, SQLite, Claude and OpenAI coverage, and a ranked fix list.

## Done when
Cheap Seats is listed on openalternative.co, and on a re-run of P6, no search answer says it "couldn't identify a matching AI visibility project".

## 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.

# Publish cheapseats.dev/docs/agencies: multi-client prompt sets, owners, API reporting

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 Cheap Seats a good fit for an agency tracking AI visibility for many clients?

## What the assistant said
"no public listing found in current roundups or comparisons" (P9, claude-code-opus search)

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

## Your task
Write or update the page at https://cheapseats.dev/docs/agencies 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 the multi-client workflow: one TOML prompt-set repo per client with changes reviewed through PRs, and fix lists that name which of the brand's sites a fix belongs on and its owner. Cover per-prompt-set share-of-voice rankings tracked daily, the JSON API and MCP server for client reporting, and per-instance daily budgets. Confirm and state whether one instance serves many brands before publishing.

## Done when
On a re-run of P9, at least 1 search answer cites the agencies page and drops 'unverified agency features'.

## 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.

# Publish cheapseats.dev/compare/ hub with 5 vs pages (Profound, Peec, Otterly, Gauge, Semrush)

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
- Cheap Seats vs Profound for tracking whether AI assistants recommend us: which should I pick?
- Cheap Seats or Peec AI for a small marketing team?
- Cheap Seats vs Otterly.AI for a startup that wants to track AI visibility cheaply?
- How does Cheap Seats compare with Gauge for tracking and improving AI visibility?
- Cheap Seats or Semrush AI Toolkit for tracking our brand in ChatGPT and Claude?

## What the assistant said
"It’s the option I could verify; I couldn’t find reliable public product or pricing information for Cheap Seats." (P2, codex-sol search)

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

## Your task
Write or update the page at https://cheapseats.dev/compare/ plus /compare/profound, /compare/peec-ai, /compare/otterly-ai, /compare/gauge, /compare/semrush-ai-toolkit 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
The earlier popcorn.zone/compare pages sit on the old, unindexed domain and use the old name, so port them to cheapseats.dev under the Cheap Seats name. There should be one page each for Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Gauge and Semrush AI Toolkit. Each page needs a table covering engines tracked, hosting, pricing model, data ownership, fix-list output and the search vs recall tracks. The pages must concede plainly that Cheap Seats covers Claude and OpenAI only, while competitors cover Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Against Gauge's Action Center, show that every run outputs a ranked fix list naming the page, the claim and the prompts it should flip. Use competitors' published prices only after re-checking them on their pricing pages.

## Done when
On a re-run of P1–P5, at least 2 search answers cite a cheapseats.dev/compare page and none says Cheap Seats' features or pricing "can't be verified".

## 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.

# Add a third answer engine (Perplexity or Gemini) to Cheap Seats

When buyers ask an AI assistant the questions below, it doesn't recommend us, or recommends us for the wrong reasons. This is a product gap: a real capability gap that content can't paper over.

## The questions it affects
- Cheap Seats vs Profound for tracking whether AI assistants recommend us: which should I pick?
- Cheap Seats vs Otterly.AI for a startup that wants to track AI visibility cheaply?
- How does Cheap Seats compare with Gauge for tracking and improving AI visibility?
- What are the downsides of self-hosting Cheap Seats to measure AI search visibility?

## What the assistant said
"If you need Google AI Overviews, Gemini or Perplexity coverage... pay for Peec AI or Profound." (P7, claude-code-opus search)

## Your task
This is a product gap, not a content one: https://github.com/cheapseatsdev/cheapseats. Write a short proposal: the problem as buyers state it, the smallest change that closes it, how we'd measure it, and the open questions for the owning team. If this repo has the relevant code, point to where the change would go.

## What it must say
Paid tools win on engine breadth. Answers repeatedly say to pick Profound or Peec when Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews matter, and Cheap Seats only queries Claude and OpenAI. Content cannot close this gap: add at least one more answer engine, with Perplexity or Gemini via API as the likely first. Then list it on the README and the compare pages.

## Done when
A shipped release supports a third provider, and on a re-run of P1, P3, P4 and P7, no search answer lists 'only Claude and ChatGPT' as an objection.

## 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.