Starting to build my first 100 user community for my open-source developer efficiency product

The product is built around a simple problem I keep seeing in engineering teams: a lot of real work happens between tickets, commits, PRs, debugging sessions, context switches, and release checks, but only a small part of that work gets reflected in Jira, Linear, GitHub Issues, or standup updates.

Meridian runs on your machine, understands what you are working on, and helps turn that context into worklogs, summaries, and ticket updates that you can review before anything gets posted.

Now I am trying to build the first real community around it, not just collect signups.

My current goal is simple: find the first 100 developers, founders, engineering managers, or open-source builders who genuinely feel this pain and are willing to give honest feedback.

I am thinking of starting with Product Hunt, developer communities, open-source circles, and conversations around AI coding agents, project management, engineering visibility, and developer productivity.

But I want to avoid building a “community” that is just a waitlist with a nicer name.

For people who have built early user communities for developer tools or open-source products:

Where would you start if the goal was the first 100 high-signal users?

Would you focus on GitHub, Product Hunt, Discord, Slack groups, direct founder-led outreach, content, or something else?

How do you keep the conversation useful without making it feel like constant promotion?

And what is the best signal that a community is actually forming around the product, not just people being polite?