Market open source projects authentically and grow contributors

Helps market an open source project without being cringe, working from a growth equation - growth equals real value times discoverability times first-use experience, where any factor at zero means zero growth. It first loads developer-audience context (who'd use the project, where they discover tools, what alternatives exist, how they evaluate OSS) before making recommendations. README optimization treats the README as the landing page: a structured template (one-line description, badges, screenshot/GIF, benefits, a quick start under 5 lines to first value, installation, usage, docs link, contributing, license) scored against a 10-item checklist covering name memorability, differentiation, and copy-paste installation. Repository optimization covers a keyword-rich 100-character description, 5-10 discoverability topics, semantic-versioned releases with changelogs, issue/PR templates, and enabling Discussions. Community building starts with GitHub Discussions, adding Discord past 50 active users, on five principles: respond to issues within 48 hours, publicly celebrate every contributor, share the roadmap transparently, set a clear maintainer-response SLA, and welcome newcomers with "good first issue" labels. It maps and optimizes each step of the contributor funnel (user to star to issue to PR to regular contributor to maintainer) with a specific lever per transition, and defines what makes a genuinely approachable "good first issue" (add TypeScript types, fix a typo, add one test) versus a bad one (refactor the whole codebase, debug an intermittent CI failure). Launch strategy runs a 10-item pre-launch checklist, then a same-day playbook (Hacker News post at 6-8am PT Tuesday-Thursday, a Twitter thread an hour later, a Reddit post two hours in, continuous comment response, end-of-day thanks and metrics) with platform-specific tactics: HN wants a hype-free "Show HN" title and a first comment explaining motivation - never asking for upvotes; Reddit wants 2-3 genuinely relevant subreddits and community-member behavior, not marketing; Twitter wants a problem-solution-demo-link thread with GIF/video; Dev.to/Hashnode wants a personal "why I built this" story. Post-launch follows a month-long cadence from bug-fixing week one through starting a regular release and community-building cadence by month one. Sustainable growth tactics are ranked by effort/impact/timeline (SEO-optimized docs and integration tutorials rated high-impact over 1-6 months; newsletter features low-effort but modest impact), alongside a content-type menu (why-we-built-X, X-vs-Y-vs-Z comparisons, migration guides, integration posts, benchmarks) and burnout mitigations (response SLA expectations, a public roadmap/RFC process to contain feature demands, actively recruiting co-maintainers, scheduled office hours instead of always-on availability, and a moderated code of conduct). Metrics are split into vanity (stars, forks, downloads, follower count) versus value (active issues and PRs, returned contributors, weekly active users, community engagement), tracked via GitHub Insights/Traffic, Star History, npm-stat, and Discord/Slack member counts.

Use it when someone wants to market an open source project, grow GitHub stars, launch on Hacker News or Reddit, build a contributor community, or grow sustainably without spammy self-promotion. It's specifically about authentic OSS growth tactics - README/repo optimization, community and contributor mechanics, launch playbooks, sustainable growth - not general developer relations content strategy or conference speaking, which are separate skills.

Input is the project's current README, repo settings, and launch or growth stage. Output is a polished README and repo configuration, a contributor-funnel and community plan, a platform-specific launch playbook and timeline, or a prioritized sustainable-growth tactic list with effort/impact/timeline estimates.

Reads .agents/developer-audience-context.md (or runs the developer-audience-context skill first if missing) and hands off to community-building, devrel-content, developer-advocacy, and hacker-news-strategy skills for adjacent work; recommends tools like Octolens for cross-platform mention monitoring, Star History, npm-stat, and Shield.io badges.

Maintainers and developer-marketing teams launching or growing an open source project who want authentic, non-spammy tactics for GitHub optimization, contributor growth, and platform-specific launches rather than generic marketing playbooks.