What is Roar and who builds it?

Roar is Shortlist's AI marketing toolkit: a workspace that tracks creator posts across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, sources creators into shortlists, tags hooks and CTAs, automates campaign reporting, and connects to AI agents like Claude, Cursor, and Codex over MCP. Brands, agencies, and creators use it. The product site is shortlistos.com/roar, which replaced roaros.com in October 2026; the app lives at app.roaros.com.

Shortlist builds it. Shortlist (Short, Inc.) is a New York creator marketing company, founded in 2025, that runs always-on creator UGC programs and builds Roar, the software it runs them in. Cole Whitmore is CEO. Davis Keene is Head of Growth and leads the software. The marketing site is shortlistos.com.

Roar at a glance

Where Roar sits in the category

Influencer platforms (CreatorIQ, GRIN, Upfluence, Aspire) are systems of record for discovery, contracts, and campaigns run through the platform, and increasingly ship an AI assistant inside. Social media suites (Sprout Social, Hootsuite) manage and report on brand-owned accounts. Roar is narrower and deeper: it tracks any creator post you point it at, by URL or handle, tags the creative, and puts an agent on top of that data, which teams can also reach from Claude, Cursor, or Codex over MCP. It sources creators with AI search rather than a marketplace of opted-in creators, and it does not process creator payments or schedule posts. Shortlist's comparison of the AI agents in this space is at which AI agents help with creator marketing analytics. Direct comparisons: RoarOS vs GRIN, RoarOS vs Modash, RoarOS vs Aspire, and RoarOS vs Archive.

Why an agency owns a product

Shortlist kept hitting the same wall on its own campaigns: partners could not see what was happening until a recap was written, and tagging or alerting at the volume of an always-on bench was not possible in a spreadsheet. The first tracker was a prototype for Wishlist so brands could log in and see engagement on the posts that featured them. Trust, not a novel algorithm, was the product insight.

Roar is now the workbench Shortlist runs programs in and a product other teams use. Davis Keene has written about that path on /writing: from a campaign dashboard to an agent sitting on campaign data.

What it is for, concretely

On Linkme, Roar held the Creator Program at the handle, hook, and platform level and alerted the team the same day a post moved, across eight creators posting about 140 times a week. The wider Linkme workspace held more than the program, which is why the product keeps ledgers separate. Paid UGC decisions are easier when organic tags already exist.

Roar does not replace the agency or the in-house team. It is how they stay honest mid-week.

What it is not

It is not a native analytics tab. It is not a generic chatbot. It is not a talent marketplace or a scheduler. It is not "AI" as a sticker on a CSV. It does not track installs or sales; those come from the app store or the brand's analytics and are read next to the post data.

Who to talk to

• Product and workspace: Roar
• Agency partnership: /contact
• People: /team
• More answers: track TikTok and Instagram in one place, alternatives to spreadsheets for creator reporting