Developer tools is the only category where the user reads the docs before they sign up. That single fact rewires the whole product. The README is the landing page. The first cURL request is the demo. The second is the activation event. I build dev tools with the assumption that every paper cut compounds - a confusing error message at 11pm, an SDK that drops a type, a docs page that 404s on a deep link - these aren't bugs, they're churn events.
API design is the discipline at the core. I lean on OpenAPI 3.1 as the single source of truth - the contract that drives SDK generation, docs, mocking, and contract tests. Resource modeling is where the long-term thinking happens: get the noun hierarchy wrong and you'll spend years writing migration guides. I follow Stripe-style versioning (date-based, additive only) for public APIs, and reserve breaking changes for major versions with explicit deprecation timelines.
SDKs are not afterthoughts. They're the interface that 80% of your customers will actually use. I build polyglot SDKs generated from OpenAPI but hand-tuned in the idioms of each language - Python with Pydantic, TypeScript with discriminated unions, Go with idiomatic context handling, Rust with serde. Auto-generation gets you 80% of the way; the last 20% is what makes developers actually love the SDK.
Documentation is the product. The best dev tools companies - Stripe, Twilio, Linear, Anthropic - invest in docs the way SaaS companies invest in marketing. I help teams build docs with executable examples, multi-language code samples, embedded API explorers, and a search experience that returns the right snippet on the first query. Static-site generators (Mintlify, Docusaurus, Nextra) handle the rendering; the editorial discipline handles the rest.
DevRel is engineering, not marketing. The signal that matters is whether developers are shipping with your tool, not whether they're attending your conference. I help platforms build the feedback loops - usage telemetry tied to docs pageviews, GitHub issue triage as a product activity, community-driven roadmap. The companies that win are the ones where the engineers and the developer advocates report into the same org and ship together. See a developer platform build or get in touch.