Ask HN: We got 100 stars. A weekend project got 12k. What are we missing?

[lilwing]

This week Graphify launched off the back of a Karpathy tweet. 48 hours to build and 1k stars. in 2 days. It uses an llm to INFER system structure literally labeling its own edges as "inferred"

we launched Ix a week ago. its an open source CLI that maps any codebase into a persistent architectural graph so ai agents stop relearning your system every session. 100 stars in 10 days. Graphify got 12k in 48 hours.

when a tool is built in 48 hours anf outpaces months of engineering in star velocity is that a signal about the product itself or the timing?? does the better technical approach win eventually or is the early momentum most important.

I think we have the better solution but also aware i might just be wrong about what the market wants right now. can anyone look through our repo and tell us?

would be super helpful.ill put the link in comments

[Madsn]

I was deciding between Ix and Graphify today, and had Sonnet (free tier) compare them for my use case. Won't paste the full comparison, but here is the reasoning Sonnet gave for recommending Graphify over Ix:

  Ix is more polished and purpose-built for agent integration, with a Claude Code plugin that hooks into every file read and grep automatically. But it's a paid product in early access, less proven, and the Claude Code plugin is Claude-specific — the AGENTS.md integration works with OpenCode but is less deep than the hook-based integration.

For my use case I think I would be perfectly fine on the free tier so the comment about it being paid might not be valid. It also seems false that Ix is early access / less proven compared to Graphify. I do think it's interesting that Sonnet made these apparently incorrect conclusions based on your website and whatever else it found online.

In my case I went with graphify because I am using OpenCode, and it seemed plausible that Sonnet would at least have gotten that part right about Graphify having better support for OpenCode. Now that I take a second look though, I realize there is a plugin for adding Ix into OpenCode (https://github.com/ix-infrastructure/ix-opencode-plugin) so now I'm contemplating migrating to Ix - the hooks available in that plugin appear to be better than what I have now with Graphify. I really dislike that graphify hooks rebuild the graph post-commit, since I want to include the graph files in my git repo.

[lilwing]

And you're right that the OpenCode plugin has strong hooks. happy to answer any questions if you're thinking about making the switch ever. not sure why it gave you incorrect info as well...

[lilwing]

Ix isn't paid! It's open source and completely free as of now.

[sph]

People still care about Github stars? News to me. I used to star repos as a reminder to check them out at a later date, and always forgot to. Only inexperienced devs on GH care about these useless and gameable vanity metrics.

[lilwing]

Well yes. This is the first product we've shipped and have no idea how to gain visibility/users without trending on GitHub/HN/Reddit/X. If you have other suggestions, I'm all ears.

[sph]

Not sure what "gain visibility without trending" means. If you want visibility, you need to show up on front pages. Make a Show HN post.

[lilwing]

Understood thank you. Just trying to build karma first because I guess you cant post on show hn without 5-10

[BeetleB]

1. Karpathy is famous. You're not.

2. How many of those stars are bots?

[lilwing]

well yeah exactly.. Karpathy is famous and we're not.

no bots. we are a team of students with no budget for that. They're all real developers with commit histories and real profiles. looked at this already.

I guess my question here is more like how are builds with minimal efforts getting more recognition than ones built by teams and for months? It's annoying to see "inferred" context getting more recognition than actual deterministic structure

[BeetleB]

No. I meant how many of Karpathy's stars are from bots?

[lilwing]

The problem isn't the stars its the fact that they're getting reposted on X and LinkedIn, causing wider reach/adoption. My goal is to get trending on GitHub so that voices in the industry pick us up and repost.

[lilwing]

https://github.com/ix-infrastructure/Ix

[fragglestickcar]

I'd take one paying customer over 10,000 github stars.

[lilwing]

We dont have paying customers as we're open sourced. Eventually trying to get to paid tiers but cant get there without viaibility/interest

[sgbeal]

> What are we missing?

To re-frame the question: why do you care how many stars (presumably you're talking about github stars?) you have? Does the number of stars change what you develop or how you develop it?

Losing sleep over github star count is akin to losing sleep over up/downvotes on HackerNews or thumbs on Your Favorite Social Media Site. Tying one's self-worth to them, or one's self-image of one's own works to them, is... well, kinda sad.

> i might just be wrong about what the market wants right now.

Github stars are no indication of "what the market wants" - they're an indication of how many people (or scripted bots) have seen the project, thought "huh, interesting," and clicked the star so that they have a bookmark of it for later reference in their github settings.

[lilwing]

Yes i was talking about GitHub stars. We don't care about stars for vanity, more because star velocity is the primary signal GitHub uses for trending, which would drive discovery for us. We don't have any kind of presence anywhere or marketing budget so I thought this would be the best way for developers to find us organically. But yeah you're right, stars don't equal market validation.

I think it's just frustrating to see hype about a weak product when ours is much more thought-through and developed.

I mean do you have any other better recommendations for reach? I just want to effectively convey what my product does to the right audience.

[sgbeal]

> We don't care about stars for vanity, more because star velocity is the primary signal GitHub uses for trending, which would drive discovery for us.

Spoken like a marketer, as opposed to a developer ;).

> I mean do you have any other better recommendations for reach?

Unfortunately no. All of my code gets posted on my own site (not github) and is left there to die, with no real concern for whether other folks make use of it. That's not a popular approach, nor does it lead to any popularity for me or my projects, so is not necessarily a model for others to follow.

> I just want to effectively convey what my product does to the right audience.

_That_ is entirely up to your docs, not the hosting platform. What you're asking about is more a function of (A) the hosting platform and (B) the various channels which drive people to that platform. i'm roughly 0% qualified to suggest any approaches to that than just "throw it over the wall" :/.

[lilwing]

Between you and me I am the marketing director for our product hehe ;)

That's sort of where I'm coming from here looking for advice. I appreciate you engaging in this convo and giving me your honest feedback. I dont come from a technical background and am trying to figure out how to navigate this space. Its been tough!!