Open source growth practice
I run 30 day growth programs for open source maintainers: positioning, launch sequencing and contributor pipelines. The curve you want is the slow one that keeps going, not the spike that dies in a week.
About
Santom is a growth practice for open source maintainers. I help GitHub repositories become easier to understand, easier to discover and easier to contribute to, using positioning, launch sequencing and contributor pipelines. Every program runs 30 days, covers one repository, and is reported with real numbers.
How it runs
Skipping straight to promotion is why most launches flatline. A repo that isn't legible to a first time visitor cannot convert attention into stars, so the order matters more than the tactics.
Most repos lose people in the first fifteen seconds. I audit what a cold visitor actually understands, then fix the gap.
Launch is a sequence, not an announcement. Each channel gets a version written for the people who read it.
Stars are a signal, not the point. Repos that keep growing are the ones where a stranger can land a first pull request without asking permission.
How it works
Ten minutes on how a repository actually earns attention, and what I do in each phase.
Selected work
Click any repository to open its preview. The current figures are read from GitHub as you look at them.
Maintainers
I had been treating the README as documentation. He treated it as the landing page, which in hindsight is obviously what it is. Traffic started converting the week after we shipped the rewrite.
What I did not expect was how much of this was operational. Half the work was just answering issues faster and labelling things properly. Boring, and it moved the numbers more than anything we posted.
He talked me out of a Product Hunt launch in the first call and explained exactly why it would not work for a security tool. That honesty is the reason I kept going for the full program.
Our first time contributor count went from two in a year to eleven in a quarter. The good first issue backlog he set up is still the thing new people land on.
The reporting was the part I valued most. Actual numbers on what moved and what did not, including the things that failed. I have worked with agencies that never showed me a single honest metric.
I expected a checklist. What I got was someone who read every open issue and told me which three were quietly costing us contributors.
The launch calendar was the first time our announcements felt planned instead of panicked. We stopped posting everywhere and started posting where it counted.
Response time on issues dropped from days to hours. That alone changed how newcomers talked about the project.
Clear, direct and refreshingly honest about what would not work. We dropped two channels he flagged as a waste of time and put the effort where it paid.
Our README finally explains what the tool is in one sentence. Traffic from GitHub finally turned into installs.
Questions
Thirty days for the standard program. Larger repositories can take longer.
No. Anyone who promises that is selling something. I guarantee the work and honest reporting.
Repository access, one weekly call and a maintainer who can answer issues quickly.
Email me the repo URL and I will quote after a short read of the project.
Next intake
Send the URL and what you've tried so far. I'll reply with an honest read on whether a program makes sense, including when it doesn't.