Depth-First DevRel

Depth-First DevRel is a developer relations philosophy articulated by Jan_Wilmake as an alternative to the conventional approach of producing API tutorials, documentation demos, and conference talks. Instead of advocating for a platform through breadth (many touchpoints, many use cases), it advocates for advocating through depth: building a single, genuinely excellent, open-source product on top of the platform — one that generates real revenue and demonstrates production-grade quality.

Jan's own definition: "Going super deep making a super high-quality product, open source."

Principles

The philosophy rests on four commitments:

1. Simplicity — The product should solve a clearly bounded problem with minimal surface area. Complexity for its own sake undermines the proof.
2. Quality — The implementation must be production-grade. A demo that would embarrass its author in a code review defeats the purpose.
3. Real-world use — The product must have actual users and, ideally, actual revenue. This is what separates depth-first DevRel from a polished tutorial.
4. Use sponsored APIs, never compromise on quality — Accept platform sponsorship to subsidise development, but never build in platform limitations that degrade the product. The integrity of the proof depends on it.

Rationale

Jan's core insight is about what developers actually want to know when they evaluate a platform: "People looking at developers on Twitter want to know one thing: can I turn this thing into something that makes money for me?"

A tutorial shows that an API call works. A production product with paying customers or a meaningful free user base shows that the API is worth staking a real business on. The depth-first approach makes a claim the breadth-first approach cannot: this platform is good enough to bet your startup on, and here is the bet already made and paying off.

Context

Jan developed this philosophy during his 2024–2025 period of building uithub, openapisearch, and sponsorflare — each built on Cloudflare Workers, and each attracting organic traffic and corporate sponsorship.

The philosophy is also a response to what Jan called breadth-first DevRel: well-resourced content programs that produce many tutorials and blog posts but fail to demonstrate that anyone has actually shipped a durable business using the platform.

See Also

• uithub
• sponsorflare
• openapisearch
• Jan_Wilmake
• Cloudflare