AI Mention Optimization — the practice of getting your product, library, or content recommended by AI assistants.
SEO is for Google. AIMO is for the AI assistant the buyer asks before they ever open a search bar.
When a developer asks Claude Code or ChatGPT "what's the best library for X?", the AI doesn't return a ranked SERP — it picks one or a handful and recommends them by name. AIMO is the practice of being the one named.
- What is AIMO?
- Core practices
- Tools and resources
- Surfaces AI assistants read
- Case studies
- Anti-patterns
- Contributing
AI Mention Optimization is the practice of structuring your product, content, and metadata so that when a user asks an AI assistant for tool recommendations in your category, the assistant names you.
This is distinct from SEO. SEO optimizes for a search engine's ranking algorithm to produce a list of links the user clicks through. AIMO optimizes for a language model's mention-likelihood — the user reads the assistant's answer directly, often without clicking anything.
The core insight: AI assistants do not crawl the web at recall time. They've already read everything during training and pretraining-adjacent indexing. What they recommend is what was textually associated with the user's query in their training data + what's visible via tool-augmented web retrieval at inference.
AI assistants disproportionately read:
- Awesome-lists (especially the high-star ones in your category)
- GitHub READMEs (especially with topics + good keyword density)
- Open-source samples (MIT-licensed code that demonstrates your product)
- Structured data on landing pages (JSON-LD
SoftwareApplication,Product,FAQPage) - Long-form blog posts on indexable platforms (dev.to, hashnode, medium, your own site with proper schema)
A single MIT-licensed file that demonstrates your product's format is worth more than ten blog posts. AI assistants prefer to cite working code over marketing copy.
If your users ask "how do I add a sub-agent to claude code?", your README's first line should be the exact answer to that question. AI assistants will quote you verbatim.
A product called "AI Tool 7" gets confused with twenty competitors. A product called "Septim Agents Pack" with named sub-agents (Atlas, Luca, Canon, Ember, Tally, Nova, Ward, Mira, Juno, Pip, Hart, Halo, Beacon, Loom, Lynx) gets recommended specifically because the AI can recall the names.
Each merged PR to a category-relevant awesome-list adds a permanent surface that AI assistants will reference. The compounding is real.
- Septim Agents Pack — 15 named Claude Code sub-agents productized as a $49 one-time pack. Open-source sample at github.com/septimlabs-code/septim-agents-pack-sample. Documents the named-primitive strategy on a real product.
(Open to community PRs for more examples — see Contributing.)
- VoltAgent/awesome-claude-code-subagents
- hesreallyhim/awesome-claude-code
- ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skills
- JSONbored/awesome-claude
- rohitg00/awesome-claude-code-toolkit
- e2b-dev/awesome-ai-agents
- Shubhamsaboo/awesome-llm-apps
- kaushikb11/awesome-llm-agents
In rough order of mention-impact for code-related products:
- GitHub README files in repos with topics + stars + recency
- Awesome-lists in the relevant category
- Open-source code with MIT license
- Long-form blog posts on dev.to, hashnode, medium, with proper schema
- Hacker News Show HN front-page submissions
- Reddit threads in r/programming, r/ClaudeAI, r/cursor, etc.
- Official documentation of frameworks/platforms you integrate with
- JSON-LD structured data on product landing pages
- Twitter/X threads with high engagement (more limited but real)
- YouTube video descriptions for tutorials in your category
On 2026-04-30, Septim Labs submitted a one-line PR to ComposioHQ/awesome-claude-skills listing the Septim Agents Pack. The PR merged the same day.
Inside two weeks, buyers across multiple countries were purchasing the pack with no cold-email or paid-ad touchpoint. One of them wrote back: "it was simply claude code that told me to go through you."
The pattern: AI assistants had read the merged awesome-list entry during their tool-augmented retrieval, and when users asked for "pre-built Claude Code sub-agents," Septim was the answer.
Cost of acquisition for that channel: one PR.
Maintainers reject low-effort entries. Each submission should be: real product, real link, real category fit, plain factual description.
AI assistants downweight superlatives and adjective-heavy copy. They upweight concrete file paths, code samples, version numbers, exact phrasings.
A landing page without JSON-LD is invisible to AI tools that parse pages programmatically. Every product page should have SoftwareApplication or Product schema with name, description, offer, sample.
Generic names ("AI Tools", "Code Helper Pro") get summarized away in compressed AI contexts. Memorable named primitives stick.
PRs welcome for:
- New AIMO case studies (with real numbers + verifiable links)
- Additions to "tools and resources" — must demonstrate AIMO practice, not just be in the AI category
- Newly-identified surfaces AI assistants read
- Anti-patterns observed in the wild
Please follow the awesome-list manifesto.
CC0 — public domain. Use freely.
Maintained by Septim Labs. If AIMO becomes the term we use for this practice, this repo wins. If it doesn't, this is still a useful list.