Step 8 — Communities (accounts + lurking now; first posts operator-gated)

Discovery plumbing (secondary). This page makes the service findable by someone already searching; it does not replace pipeline work (page 00). Do it once; no paid tier, listing or upgrade (hard rule 6).

What this is: the three highest-signal communities for reaching (a) terminal-savvy integrators and (b) labs with real holographic data, per our 2026-09-22 community-map research. The rule everywhere: contribute before promoting; read each venue's self-promotion rules before any post.

Do this now (no operator gate needed)

image.sc forum — create the company account. Read their commercial software rule: posts must "encourage knowledge and understanding... including its principles, applications and pitfalls" — i.e., teach, don't pitch. Lurk the holography/phase-imaging tags; note threads where a reconstruction question could be answered concretely.
napari Zulip (napari.zulipchat.com) — join with the company identity. This is where terminal-savvy microscopy developers live. Note: they route usage questions to image.sc — Zulip is for dev talk. The natural artifact for this venue later is a napari plugin calling the public endpoint.
r/mcp — the correct venue for an MCP-server announcement (the MCP Contributors Discord explicitly lists "service or product marketing" under "Avoid" — never announce there). Create/confirm the company Reddit account and read the subreddit rules from the sidebar directly.
Confocal Microscopy List (lists.umn.edu) — subscribe and lurk for a month before any post; archive access requires login and the charter could not be verified externally, so learn the norms from inside first.

Artifact (this step)

Four accounts created with the company identity, each venue's rules read, and a dated one-line note per venue of the observed norm.
First POSTS are a separate, operator-gated step: drafts must quote the claims-discipline block and be approved before sending.

Date	Venue	Account	Rules read (link/quote)

Buyer pages to pair with this page: workflow fit · methods supplement · holography labs. Pipeline stages and KPIs: page 00.