The architectural lead is perishable.

Coral has the strongest thesis in the Agent Data Access Platform market.

• Apache 2.0 + local-first + Rust + MCP-native + cross-source SQL — only product combining all five
• 3.4× cost efficiency, 31% accuracy gain vs direct provider MCPs (Claude Opus 4.6, n=82)
• 4.9k stars in 5 weeks — top 1% velocity for new dev tools

But Steampipe has 150+ plugins. MindsDB has 39k stars. Composio is MIT with 28k. The window to lead is 6–12 months wide.

The wedge.

More cost-efficient than direct provider MCPs on real coding tasks. No other vendor publishes a comparable benchmark. We can own the metric definition.

What we're racing against.

• Steampipe — 150+ plugins, AGPL, could relicense + add MCP
• MindsDB — 39.2k stars, ships MCP today, could pivot agent-cost narrative
• Composio + Zapier MCP — 1,000+ and 9,000+ integrations; could add batched SQL
• Anthropic — could ship first-party MCP aggregator
• Backstage / Cortex / Port — IDPs absorb the use case via MCP plugins

Why DevRel is the lever.

Coral does not need more engineering hours. Coral needs:

• Community-led plugin velocity to close the breadth gap
• Public reference customers to neutralize "zero logos"
• A defining content narrative before incumbents pivot

All three are DevRel programs. None are engineering programs.

One north star.

Active weekly developers running ≥3 sources per user.

PMF (installed) + activation (configured) + stickiness (multiple sources). One number, all the answers.

12-month targets.

• 20k GitHub stars (4× current)
• 250+ source specs (2.5× current)
• 5,000 weekly active developers
• 20 named customer references, 5 quotable publicly
• 50 Coral Cloud paying teams by Q4 2026 ($500K ARR)
• 8,000 newsletter subscribers

Seven initiatives.

• 1. Source Spec Marketplace — attacks W1 (breadth)
• 2. BYO Agent Reference Architectures — attacks S8 + O5
• 3. Token Efficiency Benchmark Series — attacks S2 + T3
• 4. Coral Co-Pilot Cohort — attacks W3 (customers) + W2 (Cloud pipeline)
• 5. Source Spec Bounty — attacks W1
• 6. Community + Content Engine — attacks W3 + W8 (brand)
• 7. Strategic Channel Integrations — attacks T6 + T5

Coral Co-Pilot Cohort.

12 weeks · 8–10 companies · 4 batches/year.

• White-glove from founders. 50% Cloud-for-life discount.
• In exchange: case study, quote, co-presented talk.
• Public Demo Day livestream — manufactures social proof at scale.
• Targets: Vercel, Linear, Stripe, Cursor, Replit, Cognition, Decagon, Sierra, Modal, Browserbase.

Source Spec Bounty.

Annual budget. Targets ~100 new community specs at 70% acceptance.

• T1 $200 · T2 $500 · T3 $1,000 · T4 $2,000
• $5K top quarterly contributor · $10K grand prize
• Quarterly themed Hack Weeks

Quarterly Benchmark Series.

Coral is the only vendor publishing token-efficiency benchmarks for agent workloads. We turn that into a publishing cadence.

• One major drop per quarter + ad-hoc on model releases
• Open-source harness, fully reproducible
• Compares against Composio, Anthropic ref MCPs, Steampipe, MindsDB, vendor MCPs
• Public leaderboard at withcoral.com/benchmarks

BYO Agent reference architectures.

Be the default data layer for the top 5 AI coding agents.

• Claude Code — co-marketed with Anthropic
• Cursor — featured Marketplace entry
• Continue.dev — OSS-friendly natural ally
• Sourcegraph Cody / Amp — code-graph × ops-data
• Goose, Aider, Devin, Cline — long-tail acquisition

Weekly cadence builds trust.

• Monday — newsletter draft
• Tuesday 11am PT — Office Hours (recorded)
• Wednesday — community "How I Coral" post
• Thursday — YouTube source spec walkthrough
• Friday — Discord recap + bounty leaderboard

Phase 1 — Foundations · Mo 1–3.

• Source Spec Cookbook v1
• Claude Code + Cursor reference architectures
• Benchmark drop on Opus 4.7
• Discord investment, weekly office hours launch
• Cohort #1 applications open
• Bounty program launches with $50K initial pool

Milestone: 8k stars · 130 sources · 1.5k WAD

Phase 2 — Coral Cloud GA · Mo 4–6.

• Coral Cloud / Teams launches
• Multi-tenant SaaS · audit logs · RBAC · shared credential vault
• AWS Marketplace listing
• Backstage plugin GA
• Cohort #1 Demo Day livestream
• Second benchmark drop

Milestone: 12k stars · 180 sources · 3k WAD · 25 Cloud teams

Phase 3 — Scale · Mo 7–12.

• AI Engineer World's Fair + KubeCon presence
• Anthropic co-marketed launch
• Plugin SDK v2 + community marketplace
• Cohorts #3 and #4
• Gartner Cool Vendor / Forrester Wave inclusion targets

Milestone: 20k stars · 250 sources · 5k WAD · 50 Cloud teams · $500K ARR

What we deliver.

Fractional engagement. The operating system, not a hire.

• Always-on: strategy, content, community, benchmarks, cohorts, bounties, events, analyst, brand
• Project-based: reference architectures, cookbook, Cloud GTM, Backstage plugin
• Tooling: OpenClaw agent · MetricsBoard · Cohort Portal · Bounty Tracker

Engagement model.

• 90-day pilot: $35K/mo retainer + $50K seed = $155K total
• Year 1 full: $420K retainer + $460K programs + $40K tools = $920K
• Quarterly OKR review gate — scope expands or contracts based on outcomes
• Exit ramp: at month 12 we hand off to a hired Head of DevRel

Why opencolin.

Same operating system, four prior programs.

• CrewAI — multi-agent orchestration DevRel
• Memori — agent memory + SF residency + MCP marketplace
• Glean — enterprise AI search dev programs
• Perplexity Sonar — 90-day growth + ecosystem vision

Plus our internal AI DevRel OS — OpenClaw agent, MetricsBoard, Cohort Portal.

Next steps.

1. Confirm fractional engagement scope
2. Sign 90-day pilot ($155K) covering Phase 1
3. Week 1: Source Spec Cookbook, weekly office hours, Discord investment, Cohort #1 prep
4. Quarterly review gate to expand to full Year 1

collin@dabl.club