# Auto-Repair-Shop-AI — Reddit Smoketest Posts + DM Templates Generated: 2026-05-15 09:40 PRD: auto-repair-shop-ai__prd__20260515-0932.md Target: r/Justrolledintotheshop, r/MechanicAdvice, r/smallbusiness --- ## POST 1 — Pain Point Question (No Product Mention) **Target:** r/Justrolledintotheshop (or r/MechanicAdvice) **Purpose:** Trigger replies → DM respondents → invite to beta **Account karma needed:** Any (pure question, no product) --- **Title:** How do you handle the "is my car done yet" calls when you're mid-job? **Body:** Took over my dad's shop four months ago. Three bays, two other guys. Still figuring out what I don't know. The thing nobody warned me about: customer status calls. We're averaging 10-15 a day. Every one of them interrupts whatever I'm doing. Last Tuesday I had a customer on hold while I was trying to get NAPA to give me a straight answer on a backordered part. Six minutes on that call and I still didn't know when the part was coming in. We track everything on a whiteboard and a notepad. It works fine for what it is. But when someone calls asking "has my part come in," I have to walk over, find the right car, read what I wrote two days ago, and then translate that into something I can actually tell the customer. Half the time my handwriting is garbage and I'm guessing. Told customers "we'll call you when it's ready" but that only holds about a third of them. Old-timers I know say this is just the cost of doing business. Maybe they're right. But some days I feel like I'm running a call center that also does brake jobs. Anyone found something that actually cuts down inbound calls without going full shop management software? Tried one of the big ones and the learning curve was brutal for a three-person shop. --- **Humanizer notes:** Specific numbers (4 months, 3 bays, 10-15 calls, 6 min), first-person throughout, rhetorical mess at the end, no product mention, ends with open question. --- ## POST 2 — Builder Story (Mention Product, Invite Beta) **Target:** r/smallbusiness **Purpose:** Direct beta recruitment **Account karma needed:** 50+ recommended --- **Title:** Building software for independent auto repair shops. Talked to 40 owners over 6 months — a few things surprised me **Body:** This started because of my neighbor. He runs a four-bay shop and called me kind of panicking last October. His guy forgot to return a drive shaft core, the deadline passed, and the supplier kept $340. He didn't even know it had gone past due until they called him. I spent the next few months talking to shop owners — some formal, some just conversations at the counter while they were writing up estimates. Drove to three shops just to watch a normal morning. What I found: the real pain isn't where I expected. It's not the complicated stuff. It's the 12-15 customer status calls every day breaking up actual work, parts being tracked in a group text thread or scribbled on a whiteboard, and core return deadlines nobody remembered to follow up on. I've been building something to help with exactly that. Basically a lightweight job tracker where you fire an SMS update to the customer when their part comes in, and core return deadlines show up in a dashboard before they slip past. Going live next month. If you own or manage a shop and want to poke at it before it's polished, I'd genuinely want your read. The early conversations with real shop people have been worth more than everything else combined. Drop a comment or DM me — especially if you've had a core return nightmare. Those stories have been the most useful. --- **Humanizer notes:** Starts with a real story (specific: drive shaft, $340, October), avoids bullet lists, no "valuable insights" or AI vocab, ends with specific invitation, voice is consistent builder-narrator. --- ## POST 3 — Pain Point (Core Return angle) **Target:** r/MechanicAdvice or r/AutoMechanic **Purpose:** Trigger replies from people who've lost money on cores --- **Title:** Has anyone actually tracked how much they've lost on missed core returns over a year? **Body:** Asked my buddy who runs a shop nearby and he said he's pretty sure it's been over $600 in the last 12 months. Three or four cores he just... forgot to return before the deadline. We don't have a great system for it. When we pull a part, we write "CORE" on the box in marker and put it in the corner. Which works until someone moves it, or we get busy, or the box gets shuffled around. Deadline passes and that's that. Most cores are $30-80 but we had a drive shaft this spring that was $340. That one hurt. Wondering if this is a common thing or if we're just bad at this specifically. What do you actually do to make sure cores get back on time? --- **Humanizer notes:** Self-deprecating ("bad at this specifically"), specific dollar amounts, no AI vocab, genuine question format. --- ## DM TEMPLATE — For People Who Reply to Post 1 or Post 3 Use this when someone comments with their own story or frustration. --- Hey [username] — saw your comment about [reference their specific situation, e.g., "the whiteboard system you described" or "that core charge situation"]. That's pretty much word for word what I kept hearing when I was talking to shop owners a few months back. My neighbor lost $340 on a missed core deadline and didn't know until the supplier called — that story is what got me started on this. I've been building something that tries to solve exactly those two things — a job tracker that fires a status SMS to customers automatically, and flags core return deadlines before they slip past. Nothing fancy, just removing the two or three daily interruptions that seem to cost the most time. Not here to pitch. If you're open to it, I'd just want to hear how you currently track parts status and cores day-to-day — even a quick back-and-forth here would help me a lot. --- **DM notes:** References their specific comment (fill in the bracket), no triple questions, no "I'm a founder" language, ends open, positions as listener not seller. --- ## DM TEMPLATE — For People Who Reply to Post 2 (Builder Story) --- Hey [username] — thanks for the comment. [Reference what they said specifically.] [If they asked about the product:] Yeah, happy to share more. It's pretty early — the core of it is the job tracker + SMS notification flow. No huge setup, you're up and running in a few minutes. The core return tracking came directly from stories like your neighbor's. [If they shared their own pain:] That's exactly the kind of thing I've been hearing. The [specific issue they mentioned] seems to come up a lot. If you'd want to take a quick look before we go live, I'd genuinely value the feedback. No pitch, just want real shop owners using it first. --- ## POSTING SEQUENCE (Recommended) Week 1: Post 1 (pure pain point, r/Justrolledintotheshop) — accumulate karma + watch replies Week 1-2: Post 3 (core return angle, r/MechanicAdvice) — different angle, different community Week 2-3: Post 2 (builder story, r/smallbusiness) — by this point have some signal from replies Don't post in multiple subreddits on the same day — Reddit may flag as spam. For iATN forums and AutoShopOwner forums: use the same pain point framing as Post 1/Post 3, but drop the "just took over my dad's shop" angle and write as an experienced service advisor instead. Those forums skew more professional.