How `speedrun-cli` went from 200 stars to 3,200 in 11 weeks
A solo-maintained Rust CLI used SuperPost to convert every release into native short-form across 6 platforms. Here are the numbers, the hooks that worked, and the ones that didn't.
By SuperPost Team· Founders
"I was about to archive the repo. Instead I got 3,000 stars in 11 weeks without writing a single tweet myself." — Mara, maintainer,
speedrun-cli
Starting line
When Mara connected speedrun-cli to SuperPost in February 2026, the repo had 218 stars and was averaging 1.4 commits per week. There was no marketing pipeline. There was no Twitter strategy. There was barely a README.
11 weeks later, the repo sits at 3,284 stars and 47 commits in the last week alone. The compounding loop is real: more stars mean more contributors, more contributors mean more commits, more commits mean more content.
The numbers
| Metric | Week 0 | Week 11 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 218 | 3,284 | +1,407% |
| Weekly commits | 1.4 | 47 | +33× |
| Posts published | 0 | 412 | — |
| Pipeline-attributed signups | 0 | $11,200 ARR | — |
The ARR number is conservative — it's only what we can attribute via UTM. Real number's almost certainly 2-3× that.
What worked
Three hook patterns drove >70% of the engagement:
- "Before/after benchmark" hooks on TikTok and Shorts. Every perf-related commit became a 14-second video showing the wall-clock improvement. Conversion from view → repo visit was 4.1%.
- "One line of Rust" carousels on Instagram and LinkedIn. We'd pull a single interesting line from the diff and explain it in 8 frames.
- Snarky changelog threads on X. Mara's voice clone is opinionated, and X readers reward that.
What didn't
YouTube long-form was a write-off. We're not running it anymore for this customer — Shorts are doing the work, and the long-form attempts averaged 200 views.
Why we wrote this up
If you maintain a developer tool and you're stuck under 1k stars, the constraint is almost never quality. It's distribution. Same loop that worked for Mara works for any indie repo with ≥1 commit a week.
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