How to write an X bio and pinned post as a developer (with examples)
By Naod Tadele · · 6 min read
Every post you write has one quiet job: getting the right people to tap your name. What happens next is decided by two things you probably wrote once and forgot about. Your bio and your pinned post.
If your posts get profile visits but few follows, the problem is almost never the posts. It's the profile. This guide shows you how to fix both pieces in under an hour.
What a visitor is asking
Someone lands on your profile with one question: should I follow this person? They answer it in a few seconds, using three things:
- Your bio: who you are and what you build.
- Your pinned post: proof that following you is worth it.
- Your last few posts: whether you post regularly and about what.
You control the first two completely. Make them do the work.
The bio formula
A good developer bio answers three questions in one or two short lines:
- What are you building? Name the product and say what it does in plain words.
- Who is it for? The people you want as followers and customers.
- Why follow? What you post about.
Put together, it looks like this:
Building [product], [what it does] for [who].
Posting [what you share] as I build.That's it. You don't need every job you've had or every language you know.
Bio examples
For the fictional product Nightshift, which writes incident summaries for on-call engineers:
Building Nightshift: incident summaries for on-call engineers. Sharing the code, the numbers and the mistakes as I go.
A version for someone with a day job:
Backend engineer by day. Building Nightshift at night, so on-call teams can stop writing incident reports by hand.
Both say what the product is, who it's for, and what you'll see if you follow. A stranger can decide in one read.
Bio mistakes to avoid
- A list of labels. "Founder. Dev. Coffee. Dog dad." tells a visitor nothing about why to follow.
- Only the product name. "Building Nightshift" means nothing to someone who hasn't heard of it.
- Jargon. "AI native observability primitives" makes people work. Say what it does.
- Promises you can't back up. "Daily threads on growth" sets an expectation your feed has to meet.
- No link. Put your product URL in the website field so curious visitors can reach it in one tap.
What to pin
Your pinned post is the first thing under your bio, so it's the post most visitors will read. It should do one of these jobs:
- Introduce the project. What you're building, why, and where it stands today.
- Show your best result. A post that already worked well, so new visitors see your strongest work first.
- Explain what you post. A short promise of what followers will get, backed by a recent example.
For most developers building in public, an introduction post works best. It answers the question every visitor has and gives them a reason to watch the story continue.
A pinned post template
I'm building [product]: [what it does] for [who].
Why: [the problem, in one or two sentences]
Where it is: [honest current state]
What I share here: [your post topics]
[link]Pinned post example
I'm building Nightshift: it writes the incident summary for on-call engineers, so you don't have to at 9am after a 3am page. Why: I spent years on call. The pages were bad. The write-ups were worse. Where it is: 14 paying teams, month 7, built solo. What I share here: what I ship each week, revenue every month, and what breaks. nightshift.example
This works because it is specific, honest about the stage, and tells people exactly what they'll get by following.
Keep it current
A pinned post from a year ago with numbers that no longer match your feed makes an account look abandoned. Set a reminder to review both pieces:
- Every month: check that the pinned post's numbers and status are still true.
- After a big launch: consider pinning the launch post while it's fresh.
- When your focus changes: rewrite the bio the same day. Your bio should describe what you post now, not what you posted six months ago.
Check if it's working
You don't need a tool to test a profile change. Look at the profile visits on your posts for a week or two, and compare them with how many new followers you got over the same period. If the gap gets smaller after a rewrite, the new version is doing its job. For more on reading those numbers, see how to read your X post metrics.
How Loudcode helps
A strong profile only matters if people keep landing on it, and that comes from posting regularly. Loudcode reads your GitHub commits, pull requests and releases, plus revenue from Stripe, Polar or RevenueCat, and drafts build in public posts for X in your voice. That includes the kind of honest status update that makes a good pinned post. You review every draft, and nothing goes to X until you approve it. If you're stuck on what to post next, the build in public post ideas list is a good place to start.