⭐ StarPulse

GitHub Star Growth Tracker — Track star counts, detect milestones, analyze growth trends, and get notifications. Zero dependencies.

Why StarPulse?

Every open-source maintainer wants to know: "How's my repo growing?" StarPulse gives you:

• 📊 Growth analytics — Track daily/weekly/monthly star growth rates
• 🎯 Milestone detection — Get notified when you hit 100, 1K, 10K stars
• 📈 Star predictions — Forecast future star counts using linear regression
• 🔔 Discord & webhook notifications — Celebrate milestones in real-time
• 📋 Reports — Generate text or JSON growth reports
• 📤 CSV/JSON export — Export data for further analysis
• 🪶 Zero dependencies — Uses only Node.js built-in modules

Quick Start

# Install globally
npm install -g starpulse

# Or use with npx (no install needed)
npx starpulse add facebook/react

# Start tracking a repo
starpulse add facebook/react
# ✅ Now tracking facebook/react
#    ⭐ 224,000 stars | 🍴 46,000 forks

# Fetch latest data
starpulse track facebook/react
# ⭐ facebook/react: 224,100 stars (↑+100)

# Track all your repos at once
starpulse track-all

# View growth report
starpulse report facebook/react

Report Example

═══════════════════════════════════════
  ⭐ StarPulse Report: facebook/react
═══════════════════════════════════════

  Current Stars:  224,100
  Growth:         ↑ +100 (+0.04%)
  Daily Rate:     3.5 stars/day
  Total Growth:   +500 (+0.22%)
  Period:         14d 6h

  ─── Trend ───
  2025-01-10: 223500 → 223700 (+200) ████
  2025-01-11: 223700 → 223800 (+100) ██
  2025-01-12: 223800 → 223900 (+100) ██
  2025-01-13: 223900 → 223950 (+50)  █
  2025-01-14: 223950 → 224050 (+100) ██
  2025-01-15: 224050 → 224100 (+50)  █

  ─── Prediction ───
  In 30 days: ~224,205 stars
  Daily growth rate: 3.5 stars/day
  Confidence: Good

═══════════════════════════════════════

CLI Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | starpulse add <owner/repo> | Start tracking a repository | | starpulse remove <owner/repo> | Stop tracking a repository | | starpulse track <owner/repo> | Fetch latest data for a repo | | starpulse track-all | Fetch latest data for all tracked repos | | starpulse list | List all tracked repositories | | starpulse report <owner/repo> [text\|json] | Show growth report | | starpulse export <owner/repo> [csv\|json] | Export tracking data | | starpulse config [key] [value] | Get/set configuration | | starpulse rate-limit | Check GitHub API rate limit |

Configuration

GitHub Token (Recommended)

Without a token, you're limited to 60 API requests/hour. With a token: 5,000/hour.

# Set via CLI
starpulse config token ghp_your_token_here

# Or via environment variable
export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_token_here

Create a GitHub token →

Notifications

# Discord webhook
starpulse config notifications.discord https://discord.com/api/webhooks/...

# Generic webhook
starpulse config notifications.webhook https://your-server.com/webhook

Custom Milestones

Edit ~/.starpulse/config.json:

{
  "milestones": [50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, 10000, 50000, 100000]
}

Programmatic API

const { StarTracker } = require('starpulse');

const tracker = new StarTracker({
  token: 'ghp_your_token',         // Optional GitHub token
  discordWebhook: 'https://...',    // Optional Discord webhook
  dataDir: '/custom/path'           // Optional custom data directory
});

// Add a repo
const info = await tracker.addRepo('facebook', 'react');
console.log(`${info.stars} stars`);

// Track (fetch latest + check milestones)
const result = await tracker.track('facebook', 'react');
if (result.milestone) {
  console.log(`🎉 Hit ${result.milestone} stars!`);
}

// Get growth report
const report = tracker.getReport('facebook', 'react', 'text');
console.log(report);

// Export data
const csv = tracker.export('facebook', 'react', 'csv');

// List tracked repos
const repos = tracker.list();
repos.forEach(r => console.log(`${r.repo}: ${r.stars} stars`));

Automation with Cron

Set up automatic tracking every hour:

# Add to crontab (crontab -e)
0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/starpulse track-all >> ~/.starpulse/cron.log 2>&1

Or use with GitHub Actions:

name: Star Tracker
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 */6 * * *'  # Every 6 hours
jobs:
  track:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm install -g starpulse
      - run: starpulse config token ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      - run: starpulse add owner/repo
      - run: starpulse track-all
      - run: starpulse report owner/repo json >> reports/$(date +%Y%m%d).json

💰 Monetization Strategy

StarPulse is free and open-source with a clear upgrade path:

Free Tier (npm package)

• ✅ Track up to 10 repos
• ✅ Basic growth reports
• ✅ CSV/JSON export
• ✅ Discord webhook notifications

Pro Tier ($5/month or $49/year)

• 🔓 Unlimited repos
• 📧 Email notifications (milestones, daily/weekly digests)
• 📊 Advanced analytics (comparison, benchmarks vs similar repos)
• 🤖 Auto-tracking via cloud service (no cron needed)
• 🎨 Custom dashboards (web UI)
• 📱 Slack & Microsoft Teams notifications

Business Tier ($19/month or $189/year)

• 👥 Team sharing & org-level tracking
• 📈 Portfolio analytics (track all org repos)
• 🔗 API access for integrations
• 📋 Scheduled PDF reports
• 🏷️ White-label options

Revenue Projections

| Scenario | Users | Pro Conversion | Monthly Revenue | |----------|-------|---------------|-----------------| | Conservative | 500 | 5% | $125 | | Moderate | 2,000 | 8% | $800 | | Optimistic | 10,000 | 10% | $5,000 |

Why This Works

1. Real pain point — No simple, focused star tracking tool exists
2. Developer audience — Willing to pay for dev tools ($5/mo is nothing)
3. Viral potential — Open source users share with other maintainers
4. Sticky product — Historical data makes switching costly
5. Natural upgrade path — Free users hit limits and upgrade

Development

# Run tests
npm test

# Run CLI locally
node bin/starpulse.js add facebook/react

Architecture

starpulse/
├── src/
│   ├── index.js      # Main exports
│   ├── tracker.js    # Core tracker orchestrator
│   ├── github.js     # GitHub API client (native https)
│   ├── storage.js    # Local JSON storage
│   ├── notifier.js   # Discord/webhook notifications
│   ├── reporter.js   # Analytics & report generation
│   └── cli.js        # CLI interface
├── bin/
│   └── starpulse.js  # CLI entry point
├── test/
│   └── test.js       # Test suite (14 tests)
├── package.json
├── README.md
└── LICENSE

License

MIT © Mike Wang