# 50 Headline Prompts That Don't Sound Like AI Wrote Them

> Built by someone who's tested every one of these on Reddit, Medium, Substack, HN.
> No cringe "10x your productivity 🤖" stuff. Real lines that get saved & shared.

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## Block 1 — Reddit/HN rants (works because it's funny + useful)

1. lol I can't believe this took me 3 years to figure out
2. bro, the fix is dumb and obvious in hindsight
3. ok hear me out — this is actually cursed but it works
4. I was today years old when I learned this
5. ngl this changed how I ship side projects
6. lowkey the most underrated trick in my stack
7. imagine my face when this 1-line config actually did it
8. woke up to my side project paying for itself — here's what I did
9. PSA: stop wasting weekends on this, just use this
10. the magic line nobody tells you about [tool]

## Block 2 — Medium / Substack curiosity hooks

11. the unsexy habit that 3x'd my output last quarter
12. I tried 12 productivity systems in 30 days — only 1 stuck
13. what nobody tells you about [domain] until you ship
14. the quiet reason your side project isn't growing
15. I deleted 14 apps from my phone and didn't miss any
16. the 2-hour weekly ritual that beats morning routines
17. tiny habits that compound into something actually useful
18. why I quit [popular thing] for 90 days — and what came back
19. the boring truth about [popular advice]
20. notes from 100 days of doing the unsexy thing

## Block 3 — Hacker News "here's what I built" hooks

21. Show HN: I automated the part of my job I hated most
22. Show HN: a small CLI that saved my team 6 hours/week
23. Show HN: an open-source tool for the boring 20% of [domain]
24. Show HN: a self-hosted version of [paid product] that I wish existed
25. Show HN: stop paying $X/mo for this, here's a free version
26. Show HN: a 200-line script that replaces [expensive SaaS]
27. Show HN: I rewrote our internal tool, here's what shipped
28. Show HN: a Markdown-first [thing] for people who hate Notion
29. Show HN: a tiny script that prints context on every git push
30. Show HN: a one-file [tool], 0 deps, MIT licensed

## Block 4 — Beehiiv / Newsletter subject lines

31. one small change this week
32. the thing I'm testing next
33. 3 links + 1 idea
34. what I deleted from my stack
35. quick note before monday
36. low effort, high signal — issue #N
37. what I shipped this week + why
38. the boring update nobody asked for
39. one tool, three uses
40. read this if you're between projects rn

## Block 5 — Dev.to / Hashnode engineering-with-personality

41. ok so I broke prod again — here's the postmortem
42. hot take: stop using [framework] for this
43. ngl — I almost rage-quit dev this week
44. the script that saved me 4 hours/week (with full code)
45. I tried [new tool] for a week, here's the real verdict
46. the bug I refuse to fix (and why the team agrees)
47. a tiny refactor that made our CI 3x faster
48. kill your darlings: 4 utilities I deleted this month
49. the dumbest Dockerfile in our repo works the best
50. built this over a weekend, here's the code

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## How to actually use these

- **Don't swap 1:1 into your post** — that's how you sound like AI.
- Pick the *shape* (curiosity / rant / tutorial) and rewrite the body in your own voice.
- Replace `[tool]` `[framework]` `[domain]` with your actual nouns.
- Add your own scars. Real ones. The template gives the spine, your stories give the weight.

## Free Bonus — 5 anti-AI-isms to strip before publishing

- "In today's fast-paced world…"
- "Let's dive in"
- "It's not just X, it's Y"
- "Game-changer"
- "Unlock your potential"

If you catch yourself writing any of those — delete and rewrite one sentence at a time till it sounds like a person.

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*v1 — tested on 4 platforms, no cringe. more drops soon.*