📣 Megaphone
Launch your open-source project the way a marketer would — even if you've never launched anything.
中文用户：发布前给开源项目做个体检，再按各平台的规矩准备推广文案 → 看中文说明
English | 简体中文 · Try the checker → · Cases: token-pilot 54 → 100, outline-skill 58 → 78, more
- Know if you're ready — blockers a visitor would hit, risks that grow with visibility, and a 0–100 score from 21 checks. Score any repo in your browser, no install.
- The right post for each channel — Show HN, Reddit, Product Hunt, X, V2EX, HelloGitHub, 阮一峰周刊, 小红书 and more: a native draft written to each platform's rules, or, where a platform wants your own words (Show HN, V2EX, 掘金, Lobsters), a fact sheet you write from. Rules come with sources and a "last checked" date.
- See what actually worked — star history and referrers lined up against what you posted, when.
Quick start
Install the skills into your coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Cursor and 70+ others):
npx skills add 2104178150-ai/megaphone
Then, inside your project, ask your agent:
launch this repo
Prefer a Claude Code plugin?
claude plugin marketplace add 2104178150-ai/megaphone
claude plugin install megaphone@megaphone
Inside a session the skills are then available as /megaphone:launch, /megaphone:launch-audit and so on.
Needs: a coding agent that supports skills, and Python 3.8+ for the bundled scripts (standard library only). The web checker needs only a browser.
See it on a real launch: Megaphone launching itself — the 小红书 images and note, the V2EX fact sheet (V2EX bans AI-written posts, so the author writes it), and what was actually published.
See it on someone else's repo: token-pilot, 54 → 100 — three fixes from our issue, then the author worked through the rest of the report. outline-skill, 58 → 78
— a demo image and a Chinese README; its author called Megaphone 「挺好用的」 ("really handy"). Open Resume, 70 → 79 — tagging v1.0.0 turned up a Docker bug the author fixed first. DragonCard, 54 → 71 in one day.
See what separates new projects that get noticed: 362 new repos, scored —
a screenshot in the first screen: 68% of those with 100+ stars, 40% of those with 5–99.
Why Megaphone?
I study communications, and I wanted to make something everyone could use. Then I noticed
how many good projects get built and then nobody looks at them.
I think the biggest problem when developers promote their work is that they talk about the
tech, not the benefits — or they're so busy building features that they forget how to win
users.
I can't code. The code was written by AI; I set the direction and kept the quality bar.
What I'm proudest of is having looked over seven indie developers' projects for them.
— the author, @2104178150-ai (translated from Chinese)
Most good open-source projects don't fail because they're bad. They fail because the
author posts one link to Hacker News, gets two upvotes, and concludes nobody cares.
Launching well is a skill — positioning, a README that converts, knowing each
community's rules, timing, and measuring — and most developers never had a reason to
learn it.
| Megaphone | Generic marketing prompt packs | "Where to post" lists |
|---|
| Reads your repo before writing anything | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Channel rules with sources and dates | ✅ | Partly | ❌ |
| Chinese developer channels (V2EX, HelloGitHub, 即刻, 小红书…) | ✅ | ❌ | Some |
| Measures which channel worked | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Try it without installing anything | ✅ web checker | ❌ | — |
| Refuses vote-gaming | ✅ | Varies | Varies |
What's inside
Skills
| Skill | What it does | Writes |
|---|
launch | Runs the whole pipeline below, pausing for your review at each step and recording your answers | .megaphone/decisions.md |
launch-audit | Finds blockers, answers risk & readiness questions, and scores the README with the public rubric | .megaphone/audit.md |
launch-positioning | Finds the one-liner: audience, alternative, proof, contrast — and the claims you won't make | .megaphone/brief.md |
launch-readme | Rewrites the README's first screen; optional twin in a second language | README.md, or a proposal in .megaphone/ |
launch-posts | Picks channels, says why it skipped the others, and drafts one native post per channel (a fact sheet where the platform wants the author's own words) | .megaphone/posts/ |
launch-plan | Dated, timezone-aware launch calendar with a go/no-go, and a posting log | .megaphone/plan.md, log.csv |
|
The audit: blockers, risks, score
- Blockers — what would make a visitor leave, found by reading the README the way
someone from your first channel would: a quick start that doesn't show the point, a
hidden hard requirement, no license, a broken install. Any open blocker caps the level
at Needs polish, whatever the score.
- Risk & readiness — what gets worse once the project is visible: unofficial APIs,
copyright, privacy, a hosted demo that can't take a burst. Answered, not scored.
- The 100-point score — 21 mechanical checks from the public rubric.
When a check passes or fails on a technicality, the audit also gives a human-adjusted
score and says why.
Channel playbooks
Each one covers fit, rules, format, timing, a template and pitfalls, with a "Last checked"
date. Rules link to the platform's own pages where we found them; community habits and
heuristics are labelled as such. Browse all →
Global: Hacker News ·
Reddit ·
Product Hunt ·
X / Bluesky ·
DEV & blogs ·
Lobsters ·
Awesome lists ·
Newsletters ·
GitHub itself ·
Plugin directories & host apps
Chinese: V2EX ·
HelloGitHub ·
阮一峰周刊 ·
即刻 ·
小红书 ·
掘金 ·
知乎 / B 站 / 开源中国 / 少数派 / Gitee
— written in Chinese, each with an English summary at the top.
Web checker and audit script
docs/ is a static page (no build, no dependencies, no server) that scores any
public repo with the same rubric, recommends channels, writes the prompt that hands the
failed checks to your agent, and gives you a badge for your README. It runs in the browser and
reads GitHub directly: the API, plus raw.githubusercontent.com for the README (falling back to
the API where that's blocked). It gives the score only; blockers and risks need the human
review in launch-audit.
audit.py gives the same score in a terminal, and
can score a local draft before you push it. Shared cases in
tests/fixtures/rubric-cases.json keep the two in sync.
python3 skills/launch-audit/scripts/audit.py OWNER/REPO # what's on GitHub now
python3 skills/launch-audit/scripts/audit.py OWNER/REPO --readme README.md # a local draft
How a launch runs
audit ──▶ positioning ──▶ README first screen ──▶ channel posts ──▶ plan ──▶ (you post) ──▶ review
│ │ │ │ │ │
audit.md brief.md README.md posts/*.md plan.md report.md
Everything lands in a .megaphone/ folder in your repo so you can read, edit and
decide. The launch skill adds it to .gitignore by default: it holds unpublished drafts
and, later, traffic snapshots that GitHub shows only to people with push access. Your
answers, and any assumptions the agent made while you were away, go in decisions.md so
later stages don't ask twice. Megaphone never publishes, submits or emails anything on
your behalf.
What it runs and connects to
Megaphone is Markdown skills plus two small Python scripts (standard library only). It has no
hooks, no MCP servers, no package installs and no server of its own, and the skills and scripts send no
usage data. The web checker counts visits (below).
| Part | When it runs | Connects to | Reads | Writes |
|---|
Skills (skills/*/SKILL.md) | When your agent follows them | Public pages the skills name: api.github.com for repo facts, hn.algolia.com and Reddit search to check for earlier posts, and the platform rule pages linked from the playbooks | Your repo's files | .megaphone/ in your repo, plus a .megaphone/ line in .gitignore; README.md only if you say yes |
audit.py | When the audit skill or you run it | api.github.com, raw.githubusercontent.com | GITHUB_TOKEN / GH_TOKEN if set, sent only to api.github.com | Prints the report |
stars.py | When the review skill or you run it | api.github.com | GITHUB_TOKEN / GH_TOKEN (stargazers and traffic need it; the skill may suggest gh auth token to set it), sent only to api.github.com; .megaphone/log.csv | Snapshots and the report under .megaphone/ |
Web checker (docs/) | In your browser | api.github.com, raw.githubusercontent.com, badge images from img.shields.io; visit counts to megaphone-checker.goatcounter.com (a fixed page path, named actions such as "check" or "copy", screen width, and the page that linked here without its query string; never the repo) | A token only if you paste one; it stays in that tab | Results cached in your browser for an hour |
Maintainer tools (scripts/, tests/) | Only when a contributor runs them; no skill does | check_sources.py: the platform pages in its SOURCES list; study.py: api.github.com |
Principles
- You publish; the agent drafts. Platforms punish automation, and your name is on it.
- Never ask for votes or stars in posts. It's against Hacker News, Product Hunt and Reddit
rules, and it gets posts killed. A quiet one-line note in the project's own README or
tool is fine; asking in posts, DMs or in return for help is not.
- Honest claims only. No invented numbers or testimonials; unknowns become
[TODO].
- Never invent the author's voice. "I built this because…" is yours to write. Without
your words, the agent leaves a
[TODO] rather than making up an origin story.
- Check whether visibility could hurt. Before making a project louder, look at what a
launch exposes: unofficial APIs, copyrighted media, other people's data, a service that
can't take a burst. No draft promises "zero risk" or "100% legal".
- Native, not translated. Chinese channels get posts written in Chinese, for that
audience. Posts are drafted only in languages you can reply in.
FAQ
Will this get me stars? It gets your project in front of the people who'd want it,
in a form they'll actually try. Whether they star it is up to the project.
Does a high score mean it'll succeed? No. The score measures the README's shape: can a
visitor see what it is, what it looks like and how to try it. Blockers measure whether it
actually works for that visitor: a 100/100 README whose quick start doesn't show the
headline feature still rates Needs polish. No score tells you whether people want the
project.
Do I need a GitHub token? Only for launch-review, and it should be the maintainer's:
GitHub lists stargazers only to authenticated requests and is limiting the list to a
repo's admins and collaborators (docs),
and traffic data needs push access. Everything else works without one; the checker and
audit.py accept one if you run out of anonymous requests.
Is the checker private? It runs in your browser; there's no Megaphone server.
Repo data comes straight from GitHub (the public API and raw.githubusercontent.com), and the
badge preview is a shields.io image whose URL carries only the score. We count visits and a
few actions (a check, a copy) with GoatCounter,
which sets no cookies and stores no IP addresses. We send each count ourselves, so it carries
only the page path or action, screen width and the page that linked here (without its query string);
we never send which repo you checked. Anonymous API requests
are limited to 60 an hour per IP; a check uses three to five, and results are cached in
your browser for an hour.
My project is in Chinese / English only. Is that a problem? No. A second language is
worth 5 of the 100 points because it unlocks more channels. If you won't launch in one,
launch-audit records it as an accepted trade-off and scores the rest.
Contributing
Platforms change their rules; the playbooks are only as good as the last person who
checked them. If you notice drift, open a "channel rule changed" issue
or send a PR — every playbook has a "Last checked" date and says where its facts come from.
scripts/check_sources.py re-reads the platform pages behind
key playbook facts and flags the ones that changed upstream. See
CONTRIBUTING.md for adding a channel or changing the rubric.
Run the tests:
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests # launch-review script, and audit.py against the shared rubric cases
python3 -m http.server 8820 # then open http://localhost:8820/tests/ for the checker (same cases)
Questions and launch stories are welcome in Issues. If Megaphone helped you, a ⭐ helps other developers find it.
License
MIT
