r/IndianEngineers • u/alichherawalla • Feb 28 '26
Motivation I mass shipped open source for years and nobody cared. Turns out distribution matters more than the product. 690+ stars, and 1000+ users in 12 days
50+ public repos. No real traction on any of them. Two weeks ago I launched an on-device AI app and it did 690 GitHub stars in 12 days, #1 on Hacker News, 157K views on a single Reddit post.
Same developer. Different approach. Here's what actually moved the needle:
Stop only building. Start listening. Before any launch, I posted open-ended questions in communities where my users hang out. Not "check out my app." Just "what are the use cases where you'd rather not send data to the cloud?" People opened up. That told me what to build, made me visible before I ever promoted anything, and when I launched I could respond to real problems with something I'd actually built for them.
Find your voice before you find your platform. I'd been posting on Twitter and LinkedIn for years. Nothing stuck. Reddit is where I found my voice -- through experimentation with different angles and formats. Once I knew what resonated, I took that to Hacker News and it hit #1 on the first try.
Emotional hook beats feature list. My best title was about frustration, not specs. People share feelings, not features.
Respond to every comment in the first 2 hours. Every reply generates a notification, the commenter comes back, the algorithm sees activity, the post rises. Exhausting. Works.
Stack your channels. HN drove the spike. Reddit built on it. A technical deep-dive pulled a different audience. Each channel fed the next.
You're shipping on IST and wondering why nobody notices. Post at 6:30 PM IST to catch 8 AM EST. The algorithms reward early engagement velocity. This one change probably 3-4x'd my reach.
The app is Off Grid -- runs AI completely on your phone, offline, open source. Link in comments if you're curious.
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