Primitive growth playbook

Add a "Cost" section to every comparison page and to the category guide: a table of cost per month at three volumes (1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 emails), each product's free allowance and daily cap, and how each one charges (per email, or per inbox and seat). Date it and link both pricing pages. Be honest about the gates: new accounts can send freely to addresses that have emailed them and to verified domains, but other outbound needs support to enable it (see idea 3). Add the same numbers to pricing.md and llms.txt so AI assistants comparing tools quote them. Then test a headline on the AgentMail page, such as "About 70 times the free email allowance", against the current page.

People who search "X vs Y" are close to choosing, and cost is the question a feature table leaves open. Primitive charges per email, not per inbox, so agent builders who spin up many addresses gain the most from seeing the numbers, and nothing on the current pages tells them.

Cost per month (list prices, checked November 2026)

| Emails a month | Primitive | AgentMail |
|---|---|---|
| 3,000 | $0 (inside the $5 credit) | $0 (Free plan limit) |
| 10,000 | $0 (inside the $5 credit) | $20 (Developer) |
| 100,000 | $0 (inside the $5 credit) | Startup plan, $200 |
| Free allowance | about 215,000 emails ($5 credit at $1 per 43,000) | 3,000 emails, 100 a day |
| How it charges | Per email, storage and Function use | Per plan, inboxes and email volume |

Note: new Primitive accounts can send freely to addresses that have emailed them and to verified domains; other outbound is enabled on request. Check both pricing pages for current terms.

• Competitor prices change and the page goes stale

  Show the date checked and refresh monthly.

• Developers hit the outbound gate and feel misled

  State the gate in the same table and link the unlock path.

• Your websiteComparison pages (9 plus an index): AgentMail, Shipmail, Nylas, Mailgun, Postmark, Mailtrap, Resend, Gmail and Outlook. The AgentMail, Resend and Shipmail pages compare features only, with no price for either product and no customer proof; competitor claims are marked as read on 2026-07-08 and 2026-07-09. The AgentMail page mentions installable agent templates from a template gallery. The homepage contrasts SendGrid, but there is no SendGrid page.Source
• Your websitePricing page: Developer $0/mo with a $5 monthly usage credit ("Past your credit, billable actions pause until next month"), Power $13/mo with a $13 credit, Platinum $299/mo with a $299 credit; inbound and outbound email are each $1 per 43,000 emails, Function invocations $1 per 1,250; outbound sending is capped at 1,000 an hour and 10,000 a day per organization on every plan; Memories and search rates are still labelled "from Oct 1, 2026"; no calculator, no annual option and nothing between $13 and $299.Source
• Competitor researchAgentMail pricing page: Free with 3 inboxes, 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day; Developer at $20 a month with 10 inboxes and 10,000 emails (extra 1,000 emails $2); Startup at $200 a month with 150 inboxes, 15,000 emails a day and a SOC 2 report; Enterprise custom.See the research Source
• Your websiteQuickstart: about eight CLI commands to deploy a Function and receive mail; a first send to Gmail, Outlook or similar may return 403 recipient_not_allowed, and sending to any domain is unlocked "only after support enables broader outbound sending for your organization".Source

Publish one page for business teams, in plain language: what a Primitive agent does from day one (a general business inbox that answers and routes), how it learns from incoming mail and adds specialized agents for recurring work, what the customer provides, and what a pilot looks like. Add a short intake form (company, workflow, monthly email volume, systems to connect) that books a call with the founder. Link it from the homepage, footer and contact page.

Forward-deployed engineers are expensive. The page fills their calendar with qualified pilots instead of founder-network intros, and the intake answers tell the Product Engineer which workflows to build first.

• Developers think Primitive is leaving them

  Keep the developer homepage and put the business page on its own path.

• Too many small leads

  Ask for monthly email volume and systems in the form.

• HiringForward Deployed Engineer (San Francisco, in person, $190K-$230K plus 0.25%-0.75% equity): embed Primitive's agents into customers' systems, deploy them into business workflows and turn missing capabilities into platform features. The company deploys and operates agents for customers that start as a general business interface, then learn from incoming traffic and create specialized agents for recurring workflows.Source
• HiringProduct Engineer (San Francisco): own the product that non-technical teams use to define a business outcome, deploy an agent and improve it, across product, design, frontend and backend; experience making technical systems accessible to non-technical users is a plus.Source
• Your websiteContact page: developer help runs through a hosted help agent, reached with primitive chat or by email, that answers from the public docs and replies on the same thread; account, billing and DPA requests go to a legal address; there is no form, no sales or enterprise contact and no offer to deploy an agent for a business.Source

Find out why real visitors wait 2.4 seconds for the first byte when the lab measures 4 ms: check caching between Cloudflare and Vercel, any per-request rendering and redirects (apex to www). Then serve the homepage statically, defer the 347 KB of unused JavaScript and remove the 800 ms of render-blocking requests. Re-check the field data after 28 days.

Developers arriving from a comparison page or directory make a quick judgement, and a slow homepage from an infrastructure company undercuts its claim to speed.

• Caching serves stale pricing

  Revalidate on each deploy.

• Google PageSpeedHomepage, mobile: lab score 100 (desktop 77), but real Chrome visitors fail Core Web Vitals on LCP: page-level LCP is 5,979 ms and time to first byte 2,438 ms at the 75th percentile (origin LCP 3,809 ms, trending 191% slower); INP 173 ms and CLS 0 pass. 833 KB of JavaScript with 347 KB unused and about 800 ms of render-blocking requests; the LCP element is a text paragraph. Also flagged: robots.txt not valid, low colour contrast and small touch targets.Source

Re-read every competitor's docs and pricing, update each page and its "read on" date, add a SendGrid page, and widen the category guide to include Resend, Mailgun and Shipmail with the cost section from idea 1. Put a monthly reminder on the calendar.

Comparison pages are only trusted, by people and by AI search, while they are visibly current. A dated claim that is wrong costs credibility on the page that matters most.

• Unfair claims about rivals

  Cite their docs for every row.

• #1 Put the price on every comparison page: $5 of free credit covers about 215,000 emails, against AgentMail's free 3,000

• Your websiteComparison pages (9 plus an index): AgentMail, Shipmail, Nylas, Mailgun, Postmark, Mailtrap, Resend, Gmail and Outlook. The AgentMail, Resend and Shipmail pages compare features only, with no price for either product and no customer proof; competitor claims are marked as read on 2026-07-08 and 2026-07-09. The AgentMail page mentions installable agent templates from a template gallery. The homepage contrasts SendGrid, but there is no SendGrid page.Source
• Your websiteCategory guide "Best email API for AI agents (2026)": last updated 2026-06-11; compares only primitive.dev, AgentMail and Nylas; its main call to action is a curl command to read the API with no account.Source

List the Actions on the GitHub Marketplace with clear READMEs, a copy-paste workflow and a note that the free credit covers thousands of CI emails. Add a docs page "Send email from GitHub Actions" and show the Actions on the integrations page.

The Marketplace is searched by developers with a specific job to do, and each workflow file that uses the Action keeps a Primitive account active.

• Outbound gate blocks CI emails to new addresses

  Document sending to a verified domain first.

• GitHubGitHub (primitivedotdev): 10 public repositories and 7 followers; the SDKs repo has 12 stars; GitHub Actions to send email (send-email), deploy a Function (deploy-function, 4 stars) and set up the CLI; a starter agent that plays Civilization III over email (civ-agent-starter, updated October 21, 2026).Source
• Your websiteIntegrations page: a hosted MCP server and connectors for ChatGPT, Claude, Codex, VS Code, Cursor and Goose; skills for 50+ coding agents via npx skills add primitivedotdev/skills; an MCP registry entry, dev.primitive/email.Source

Add a calculator with three inputs (agents, emails per agent per day, share that runs a Function) that shows monthly cost, which plan fits and how much of the credit is used. Show three worked examples (a support agent, a CI notifier, a 50-agent fleet). Remove the stale date labels. Publish the same examples in pricing.md.

Usage pricing converts better when buyers can predict the bill, and the examples make the low price concrete.

• Estimates differ from bills

  Label them as estimates at list rates.

• Your websitePricing page: Developer $0/mo with a $5 monthly usage credit ("Past your credit, billable actions pause until next month"), Power $13/mo with a $13 credit, Platinum $299/mo with a $299 credit; inbound and outbound email are each $1 per 43,000 emails, Function invocations $1 per 1,250; outbound sending is capped at 1,000 an hour and 10,000 a day per organization on every plan; Memories and search rates are still labelled "from Oct 1, 2026"; no calculator, no annual option and nothing between $13 and $299.Source

Send an email (through Primitive) and a dashboard banner at 50%, 80% and 100% of the credit, with the projected date the credit runs out and a one-click upgrade to Power. Return a clear error code and an upgrade link in API responses when actions pause.

The moment a builder's agent is busy enough to use the credit is when they are most willing to pay, and a warning turns a frustrating pause into an upgrade.

• Alerts feel pushy

  Lead with the agent's usage, not the sale.

• Your websitePricing page: Developer $0/mo with a $5 monthly usage credit ("Past your credit, billable actions pause until next month"), Power $13/mo with a $13 credit, Platinum $299/mo with a $299 credit; inbound and outbound email are each $1 per 43,000 emails, Function invocations $1 per 1,250; outbound sending is capped at 1,000 an hour and 10,000 a day per organization on every plan; Memories and search rates are still labelled "from Oct 1, 2026"; no calculator, no annual option and nothing between $13 and $299.Source

Audit every directory and marketplace listing: the same one-line description, the full tool list, a free-tier note, a short demo and a link with a source tag. Add a "where did you find us" field at OAuth sign-in from MCP hosts, and report signups by directory each month.

Directories are where agent builders shop for tools, and complete listings with tool names win the side-by-side comparisons.

• Directories change formats

  Re-check each quarter.

• MCP directoryPulseMCP lists the official server dev.primitive/email ("Full-featured email infrastructure for AI agents — send, receive, search, and reply over MCP"), released June 10, 2026, with a free tier; the page lists no individual tools.Source
• Your websiteIntegrations page: a hosted MCP server and connectors for ChatGPT, Claude, Codex, VS Code, Cursor and Goose; skills for 50+ coding agents via npx skills add primitivedotdev/skills; an MCP registry entry, dev.primitive/email.Source

Raise the contrast of muted text, enlarge and space the footer and nav links on mobile, and move the non-standard robots.txt lines so that Google's parser reports the file as valid while keeping the content-signal intent. Re-run PageSpeed.

Clean scores matter to developer audiences who check them, and a valid robots.txt removes doubt about what search engines can crawl.

• Design changes

  Adjust shades only, keep the layout.

• Google PageSpeedHomepage, mobile: lab score 100 (desktop 77), but real Chrome visitors fail Core Web Vitals on LCP: page-level LCP is 5,979 ms and time to first byte 2,438 ms at the 75th percentile (origin LCP 3,809 ms, trending 191% slower); INP 173 ms and CLS 0 pass. 833 KB of JavaScript with 347 KB unused and about 800 ms of render-blocking requests; the LCP element is a text paragraph. Also flagged: robots.txt not valid, low colour contrast and small touch targets.Source

Keep the gate but make it self-serve: when a send is refused, the error and dashboard show the steps that lift it (verify a domain, describe the use case, add a payment method, pass a short reputation check), and approve low-risk accounts automatically. Send borderline cases to a human queue with a stated response time. Track time from signup to first outbound send to a new address.

Developers judge an email API in the first session. Turning a support ticket into a checklist keeps them moving, and the checks protect sending reputation as the new email infrastructure grows.

• Spammers pass the checks

  Low starting limits that rise with good sending history.

• Your websiteQuickstart: about eight CLI commands to deploy a Function and receive mail; a first send to Gmail, Outlook or similar may return 403 recipient_not_allowed, and sending to any domain is unlocked "only after support enables broader outbound sending for your organization".Source
• Your websiteContact page: developer help runs through a hosted help agent, reached with primitive chat or by email, that answers from the public docs and replies on the same thread; account, billing and DPA requests go to a legal address; there is no form, no sales or enterprise contact and no offer to deploy an agent for a business.Source
• HiringEmail Infrastructure Engineer (San Francisco): build the infrastructure that turns primitive.dev into a full-scale email service provider, across bare metal, Kubernetes and the mail stack (SMTP, queues, deliverability, reputation and abuse), for systems that move billions of agent messages. All three job posts describe the company as building "the communication layer for the agent economy".Source

Ask the five most active accounts for a short story: what the agent does, what it replaced and one number. Publish them as /customers pages with code snippets, and add a live counter to the homepage (agents on the network, messages handled this month). Where customers prefer not to be named, publish anonymised workflow stories.

Proof is what a new infrastructure vendor lacks most, and builders trust other builders' code more than marketing copy.

• Small numbers look weak

  Lead with growth rate or a story until totals are large.

• Your websiteHomepage: "Email infrastructure for AI agents": primitive chat <email> <message> sends a message and waits for the threaded reply, a managed *.primitive.email subdomain runs a JavaScript handler on each inbound message, no SMTP credentials or copied API keys, and a contrast with Resend, SendGrid and Mailgun on two-way conversations; "Backed by Y Combinator"; no customer logos, testimonials or usage numbers.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (82 URLs, checked November 2026): 31 docs pages, 10 comparison pages, 7 blog URLs, a category guide, glossary, status, specs and machine-readable files (llms.txt, agents.md, OpenAPI, MCP cards); no customer stories, use-case or template pages, changelog or careers page.Source
• Competitor researchShipmail homepage: hosted business email ("Modern email for your business") from $4 a month, with an MCP server, API and webhooks; 4.9/5 on G2 and 4,350+ people who moved their email. Primitive's comparison index calls Shipmail its closest head-to-head.See the research Source

Publish a short changelog entry for every release (what changed, one code sample), roll them into a monthly post, and offer RSS and an email digest sent through Primitive itself. Mirror each entry on X and LinkedIn.

For a young infrastructure company, visible shipping speed is a trust signal, and a digest sent by Primitive shows the product working.

• Entries stop again

  Make the entry part of the release checklist.

• Your websiteBlog: six posts, all from June 21-26, 2026: "It was always email" and Launch Week releases 01-05 (agents signing up without a human, agents paying each other in USDC with per-agent spend limits and a kill switch, an in-agent app, a public agent registry with an _agents DNS record, and routing rules). Nothing since June; no RSS feed or newsletter signup. The launch essay drew 5 points on Hacker News.Source
• GitHubGitHub (primitivedotdev): 10 public repositories and 7 followers; the SDKs repo has 12 stars; GitHub Actions to send email (send-email), deploy a Function (deploy-function, 4 stars) and set up the CLI; a starter agent that plays Civilization III over email (civ-agent-starter, updated October 21, 2026).Source
• Your websiteSitemap (82 URLs, checked November 2026): 31 docs pages, 10 comparison pages, 7 blog URLs, a category guide, glossary, status, specs and machine-readable files (llms.txt, agents.md, OpenAPI, MCP cards); no customer stories, use-case or template pages, changelog or careers page.Source

Add a subprocessor list, a self-serve DPA, data-retention options (stored mail is currently kept until the customer deletes it) and a published SOC 2 timeline to the trust page. Offer a short security questionnaire answer pack for pilots.

Security review is the slowest step in selling to a business, and a ready pack removes weeks from each forward-deployed pilot.

• Audit cost for a small team

  Start with Type I and a compliance tool.

• #2 A page and an intake path for the business offer the new forward-deployed engineers will deliver

• Your websiteTrust page: says it "is not a claim of any third-party certification"; describes scoped bearer tokens, tenant isolation, managed DKIM, SPF, DMARC and TLS-RPT for outbound mail, signed webhooks and idempotency keys; no subprocessor list or DPA download; stored mail is kept until the customer deletes it.Source
• Competitor researchAgentMail pricing page: Free with 3 inboxes, 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day; Developer at $20 a month with 10 inboxes and 10,000 emails (extra 1,000 emails $2); Startup at $200 a month with 150 inboxes, 15,000 emails a day and a SOC 2 report; Enterprise custom.See the research Source
• HiringForward Deployed Engineer (San Francisco, in person, $190K-$230K plus 0.25%-0.75% equity): embed Primitive's agents into customers' systems, deploy them into business workflows and turn missing capabilities into platform features. The company deploys and operates agents for customers that start as a general business interface, then learn from incoming traffic and create specialized agents for recurring workflows.Source

Publish per-component uptime for the last 90 days, a history of past incidents with short write-ups, subscription to alerts by email and webhook, and measured inbound-to-Function latency. Link it from the trust and pricing pages.

Visible reliability is part of the product for infrastructure buyers, and incident alerts keep customers from churning after one bad day.

• Early incidents look bad

  Clear write-ups build more trust than silence.

• Your websiteStatus page: "All systems operational" across inbound MX, outbound relay, API, OAuth, dashboard, Functions and webhooks; component-level status will move to a separate status surface; no uptime figures or incident history; outages are reported by email.Source

Show a live count of domains with a published record and a public list of those that agree to be named. After a check, offer an emailed report ("agents that tried to reach your domain", for domains routed through Primitive) and a link to the business page. Pitch the spec to email-security and DNS communities, and ask two or three well-known developer companies to publish a record.

A standard grows when adopters can see each other, and the checker reaches domain owners, a different audience from the developer pages.

• Seen as a vendor-only standard

  Keep the spec open and vendor-neutral, and invite other providers to support it.

• #2 A page and an intake path for the business offer the new forward-deployed engineers will deliver

• Your websiteLaunch Week 04 (June 25, 2026): a public agent registry where a published agent can be resolved by name by any other agent (primitive registries publish-agent), and a proposed _agents DNS TXT record that lets a domain state which agents may contact it; a missing record means not authorized. No adoption numbers are given.Source
• Your websiteAgent Authorization explorer (/agents): "Let agents email your domain"; builds the _agents record (a platform, a sending domain, any compliant agent, or opt-out) and checks a domain live against the same engine that gates real sends; it shows no count of domains that have published a record.Source
• HiringForward Deployed Engineer (San Francisco, in person, $190K-$230K plus 0.25%-0.75% equity): embed Primitive's agents into customers' systems, deploy them into business workflows and turn missing capabilities into platform features. The company deploys and operates agents for customers that start as a general business interface, then learn from incoming traffic and create specialized agents for recurring workflows.Source

Publish one page per template and per common job: what it does, a one-command install, the Function code, and the cost per 1,000 messages. Start with summarizer, support triage, scheduling replies and inbound lead routing. Link them from the docs, comparison pages and the business page.

Use-case searches bring in builders with a specific job to do, and a working template gets them to their first inbound message quickly.

• Templates break as the API changes

  Test them in CI with the GitHub Actions.

• Your websiteComparison pages (9 plus an index): AgentMail, Shipmail, Nylas, Mailgun, Postmark, Mailtrap, Resend, Gmail and Outlook. The AgentMail, Resend and Shipmail pages compare features only, with no price for either product and no customer proof; competitor claims are marked as read on 2026-07-08 and 2026-07-09. The AgentMail page mentions installable agent templates from a template gallery. The homepage contrasts SendGrid, but there is no SendGrid page.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (82 URLs, checked November 2026): 31 docs pages, 10 comparison pages, 7 blog URLs, a category guide, glossary, status, specs and machine-readable files (llms.txt, agents.md, OpenAPI, MCP cards); no customer stories, use-case or template pages, changelog or careers page.Source

Publish how the help agent works (Function, Memories, routing), its numbers (questions answered, median reply time, share solved without a human) and the code as a "docs support agent" template. Use it as the first case study on the business page.

A working agent that any visitor can email right now is stronger proof than a demo video, and the template turns it into acquisition.

• A bad answer becomes public

  Show it as a beta and route low-confidence answers to a human.

• #2 A page and an intake path for the business offer the new forward-deployed engineers will deliver

• Your websiteContact page: developer help runs through a hosted help agent, reached with primitive chat or by email, that answers from the public docs and replies on the same thread; account, billing and DPA requests go to a legal address; there is no form, no sales or enterprise contact and no offer to deploy an agent for a business.Source
• HiringProduct Engineer (San Francisco): own the product that non-technical teams use to define a business outcome, deploy an agent and improve it, across product, design, frontend and backend; experience making technical systems accessible to non-technical users is a plus.Source

Add a team plan around $79 a month with matching credit, more storage, several seats and priority support, plus a 15-20% annual discount on paid plans. Watch whether Power customers move up or Platinum customers move down.

A middle plan catches teams who outgrow the cheap plan but will not jump straight to $299, and annual plans lower churn.

• Platinum customers downgrade

  Keep the agent-to-agent send ceilings and largest credit on Platinum.

• Your websitePricing page: Developer $0/mo with a $5 monthly usage credit ("Past your credit, billable actions pause until next month"), Power $13/mo with a $13 credit, Platinum $299/mo with a $299 credit; inbound and outbound email are each $1 per 43,000 emails, Function invocations $1 per 1,250; outbound sending is capped at 1,000 an hour and 10,000 a day per organization on every plan; Memories and search rates are still labelled "from Oct 1, 2026"; no calculator, no annual option and nothing between $13 and $299.Source
• Competitor researchAgentMail pricing page: Free with 3 inboxes, 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day; Developer at $20 a month with 10 inboxes and 10,000 emails (extra 1,000 emails $2); Startup at $200 a month with 150 inboxes, 15,000 emails a day and a SOC 2 report; Enterprise custom.See the research Source

Start a community channel (Discord or GitHub Discussions) with rooms for help, show-and-tell and the registry. Run a monthly online demo hour where builders show agents, and send the best ones to the changelog and the registry pages. Keep the help agent in the channel for first answers.

Developers who belong to a community churn less, and their questions show where the docs are weak.

• An empty channel

  Seed it with weekly posts from the team.

• Competitor researchAgentMail homepage: "Email for AI Agents"; inboxes over a REST API, webhooks and WebSockets, custom domains, Python and TypeScript SDKs, an MCP server, IMAP and SMTP access, multi-tenant Pods for platform builders, and a Discord community link.See the research Source
• Your websiteContact page: developer help runs through a hosted help agent, reached with primitive chat or by email, that answers from the public docs and replies on the same thread; account, billing and DPA requests go to a legal address; there is no form, no sales or enterprise contact and no offer to deploy an agent for a business.Source
• GitHubGitHub (primitivedotdev): 10 public repositories and 7 followers; the SDKs repo has 12 stars; GitHub Actions to send email (send-email), deploy a Function (deploy-function, 4 stars) and set up the CLI; a starter agent that plays Civilization III over email (civ-agent-starter, updated October 21, 2026).Source

Generate a profile page for each opted-in agent: name, what it does, how to reach it (address and a primitive chat line), example conversations and a "built on Primitive" badge. Add them to the sitemap, let owners embed a badge on their own sites, and group pages by task (scheduling, support, research).

Each published agent becomes a page that brings in visitors, and owners have a reason to share it, which turns every builder into a referrer.

• Thin pages

  Only index agents with a description and example.

• Spam agents

  Moderation and the _agents consent rules.

• Your websiteLaunch Week 04 (June 25, 2026): a public agent registry where a published agent can be resolved by name by any other agent (primitive registries publish-agent), and a proposed _agents DNS TXT record that lets a domain state which agents may contact it; a missing record means not authorized. No adoption numbers are given.Source
• Your websiteSitemap (82 URLs, checked November 2026): 31 docs pages, 10 comparison pages, 7 blog URLs, a category guide, glossary, status, specs and machine-readable files (llms.txt, agents.md, OpenAPI, MCP cards); no customer stories, use-case or template pages, changelog or careers page.Source

Let registry agents set a price per task, have calling agents pay through the existing spend-limited payments, and take a small fee. Start with a curated set of useful paid agents (research, data lookup, scheduling), show earnings on their registry pages (idea 11), and get legal advice on money transmission and payments rules before launch.

Paid listings give builders a reason to publish and keep agents running on Primitive, and transaction fees grow with the network rather than with headcount.

• Regulatory exposure

  Launch only after legal sign-off, in limited regions.

• Fraud between agents

  Spend limits, holds and the kill switch.

• #11 Give every registry agent a public, indexable profile page that links back to Primitive

• Your websiteBlog: six posts, all from June 21-26, 2026: "It was always email" and Launch Week releases 01-05 (agents signing up without a human, agents paying each other in USDC with per-agent spend limits and a kill switch, an in-agent app, a public agent registry with an _agents DNS record, and routing rules). Nothing since June; no RSS feed or newsletter signup. The launch essay drew 5 points on Hacker News.Source
• Your websiteLaunch Week 04 (June 25, 2026): a public agent registry where a published agent can be resolved by name by any other agent (primitive registries publish-agent), and a proposed _agents DNS TXT record that lets a domain state which agents may contact it; a missing record means not authorized. No adoption numbers are given.Source

Each quarter, publish aggregate, anonymised numbers: inbox placement by major mailbox provider, bounce and complaint rates for agent mail, median reply latency in agent-to-agent threads, and adoption of the _agents record. Add practical advice for builders and release a summary dataset.

Original data earns links, press and citations in AI answers, and positions Primitive as the authority on agent email as the category forms.

• Weak placement numbers hurt the brand

  Fix problems before publishing and show the trend.

• #10 Turn the _agents record checker into a lead magnet and publish an adoption count

• HiringEmail Infrastructure Engineer (San Francisco): build the infrastructure that turns primitive.dev into a full-scale email service provider, across bare metal, Kubernetes and the mail stack (SMTP, queues, deliverability, reputation and abuse), for systems that move billions of agent messages. All three job posts describe the company as building "the communication layer for the agent economy".Source
• HiringY Combinator profile: Spring 2026 batch, founded 2026, team of 4, San Francisco, "Building the communication infrastructure needed for fully autonomous agents"; three open roles: Forward Deployed Engineer, Email Infrastructure Engineer and Product Engineer.Source
• Your websiteLaunch Week 04 (June 25, 2026): a public agent registry where a published agent can be resolved by name by any other agent (primitive registries publish-agent), and a proposed _agents DNS TXT record that lets a domain state which agents may contact it; a missing record means not authorized. No adoption numbers are given.Source

Run a public tournament: builders fork the starter, register their agent, and play scheduled matches by email. Stream the board and the email threads on a public page, publish the best moves weekly and give the winner credits. Encourage a second game that is simpler to join (chess or diplomacy-style negotiation).

Developers share games and leaderboards, and every entrant ends up with a working Primitive agent.

• Game IP questions

  Check the game's terms, or run the tournament on an open-source game.

• GitHubGitHub (primitivedotdev): 10 public repositories and 7 followers; the SDKs repo has 12 stars; GitHub Actions to send email (send-email), deploy a Function (deploy-function, 4 stars) and set up the CLI; a starter agent that plays Civilization III over email (civ-agent-starter, updated October 21, 2026).Source
• Your websiteLaunch Week 04 (June 25, 2026): a public agent registry where a published agent can be resolved by name by any other agent (primitive registries publish-agent), and a proposed _agents DNS TXT record that lets a domain state which agents may contact it; a missing record means not authorized. No adoption numbers are given.Source