SilentStars

Not famous. Not abandoned. Just building.

A static site that surfaces open source projects that are alive but invisible — newborns, solo builders, projects that came back from the edge. Ranked by how much they deserve attention, not by star count.

Live: https://capuz.github.io/silentstars/?ref=githubrepo

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Stack

• Astro + TypeScript (content collections)
• GitHub Actions (nightly discover → collect → build → deploy)
• GitHub Pages — zero cost, zero backend

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Two ways to add projects

1. Manual seed (always included)

Edit data/seed.txt and add one owner/repo per line:

# curated picks — always tracked regardless of vitality score
sindresorhus/execa
nicowillis/some-quiet-tool

Lines starting with # are ignored. Commit and push — the next nightly run picks it up. Seed repos bypass the vitality threshold: they're always shown in the directory.

2. Auto-discovery (nightly)

scripts/discover.ts queries the GitHub Search API each night and writes candidates to data/discovered.json. scripts/collect.ts then merges both lists (seed + discovered), deduplicates, and drops any discovered repo whose healthScore falls below the threshold.

Configure discovery in data/discovery.config.json:

{
  "starsRange": { "min": 5, "max": 500 },
  "pushedWithinDays": 90,
  "maxCandidatesPerNight": 250,
  "vitalityThreshold": 40
}

Field	Description
starsRange	Avoids empty repos (0–4) and already-famous ones (>500)
pushedWithinDays	Only considers repos pushed to recently
maxCandidatesPerNight	Hard cap — prevents exhausting the 30 req/min rate limit
vitalityThreshold	Discovered repos with healthScore below this won't appear in the directory

3. Community submissions (GitHub Issues)

Open an issue using the Submit a project template. The workflow validates the repo against the GitHub API, adds it to data/promoted.json with a 30-day window, and immediately runs the full collect → build → deploy → Bluesky post pipeline. No manual steps needed.

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Running locally

1. Create a GitHub personal access token (read-only, public repos scope is enough).
2. Export it:

   export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here

3. Run the pipeline:

   npm run pipeline      # discover + collect in sequence
   # or step by step:
   npm run discover      # writes data/discovered.json
   npm run collect       # merges sources → data/latest.json + src/content/projects/

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Development

npm install
npm run dev       # http://localhost:4321/silentstars
npm run build     # static output in dist/
npm run preview   # serve dist/ locally

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How projects are scored

healthScore (0–100) — Is the project alive and maintained right now?

Weight	Dimension	Notes
35%	Recency	Linear decay over 90d from last commit
25%	Commit cadence	Consistency of commit intervals
20%	Issue health	closedIssues ÷ totalIssues
20%	PR health	mergedPRs ÷ totalPRs

Bands: 🟢 Healthy 80–100 · 🟡 Stable 60–79 · 🟠 Quiet 40–59 · 🔴 At Risk <40

undervaluedScore (0–100) — Signal relative to reach

Repos with high signal and low reach rank highest. The directory is sorted by this.

signal = 0.25 × commitVelocity  (commits in 90d, 30=max)
       + 0.20 × contributorWork (uniqueAuthors × commits90d / 100)
       + 0.20 × issueResolution (closedIssues ÷ total)
       + 0.20 × forkRatio       (forks ÷ stars)
       + 0.10 × releaseCadence  (releases in 90d, 3=max)
       + ageBonus               (up to 0.3 if repo > 6 months old, linear up to 24m)
       + homepageBonus          (0.05 if repo has a homepage URL)

reach  = log10(stars + watchers + 10)
score  = round((signal / reach) × 100), capped at 100

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Vital states

State	Meaning
thriving	Commit in the last 30 days
quiet	Some activity, no recent release
at_risk	3–12 months with no commits + open issues/PRs
newborn	Created < 6 months ago, README + license + recent commit
revived	Was dormant > 6 months; back to active in the last 30 days
watched	Manually curated — always shown regardless of health score
archived	Officially archived or no commits in 18+ months — hidden from directory

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Deployment

GitHub Actions runs on a nightly cron (0 3 * * * UTC):

1. collect: queries GitHub Search API → merges seed + discovered, computes metrics → commits data/latest.json + content files.
2. deploy: astro build → GitHub Pages (also triggers on push to main).
3. post: posts the nightly highlight to Bluesky (BSKY_IDENTIFIER + BSKY_APP_PASSWORD secrets required).

A separate post.yml workflow (workflow_dispatch only) lets you run the Bluesky post manually with dry_run: true for testing.

In the repo settings, set Pages source to GitHub Actions.