Getting started
Add a brand, add prompts, and get your first measurement of how AI answers describe you.
Add a brand, add the questions your buyers ask, and get your first measurement. Setup takes about five minutes; results arrive over the following hours.
Working from code or with an AI agent? The same steps run over the API. Install the TypeScript SDK:
bash
npm install @shruwd/sdk
For Claude, Cursor or another MCP client, the server is npx -y shruwd-mcp — see
MCP server. Both take an API key from Account → API keys. The
API is described at /openapi.json, and the
API overview covers authentication and errors.
Prerequisites
- A Shruwd account. If you do not have one, create one — the free plan needs no card.
- Your brand's domain.
- A rough idea of the questions a buyer asks before choosing a product like yours.
1. Add your brand
Go to Brands → Add a brand and fill in three fields.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Brand name | Your name as it is written in answers. It becomes the first thing Shruwd matches on, so spell it the way the world does. |
| Domain | A URL or a host. It is reduced to the registrable domain, and citations of any page on it count as yours. |
| Timezone | Sets the day boundary for measurements. |
Leave Suggestions on. Shruwd reads your homepage and drafts prompts and competitors for you to edit, which is faster than starting from a blank page. Nothing is saved until you add it.
The domain cannot be changed later — it defines what Shruwd treats as you. To track a different domain, add another brand.
2. Add competitors
Go to Competitors and add the brands you expect to be compared against. Shruwd counts a mention only when it matches exactly, so add the spellings answers actually use.
Short or common-word names need context terms — words that make "Arc" mean the company rather than the word. Shruwd asks for them rather than guessing.
Add them before your prompts. Your first measurement starts with your first prompt and counts only the competitors that exist by then, and on the free plan it is the only one.
You can skip this and come back. Once answers start arriving, Shruwd lists the names that came up but are not tracked, and you can accept them in one click.
3. Add prompts
Prompts are the questions asked on each engine, every cycle. Go to the brand's Prompts page and add them one per line.
Write them the way a buyer would type them, not as keywords:
text
best waitlist software for a product launch
launchlist alternatives
how do I collect sign-ups before launch
Pick an intent for each batch. Intent decides which diagnostics apply, and
commercial and comparison prompts are where competitors get named — start there.
Your first measurement begins within minutes of your first prompt, so add the whole set together.
4. Read the first results
Results appear on the brand's Overview as each cycle completes. Expect the first numbers within a few hours, not immediately.
Until a metric has at least ten responses behind it, Shruwd shows insufficient data rather than a number. That is not zero and not an error — it means the sample is too small to mean anything yet.
Next steps
- Reading your results — what each number means
- Prompts — choosing questions worth measuring
- How findings work — turning a result into a fix