A sparse alert for GitHub repos important enough to deserve your attention — without touching the X API.
You saw mempalace on X and thought "how did I not know about this?". gh-radar
is the cron job that makes sure you find the next one. Every morning it pulls
the tools that are trending and being discussed, dedupes them, and applies a
strict, tiered importance gate. Must-see items can expand the alert beyond five;
notable items only fill empty slots in the normal five-item target. A ten-item
safety cap prevents runaway alerts, and on an ordinary day it sends nothing.
It reads the places tools surface, across several current-signal angles. Five of the six sources need no API key at all; only Reddit is opt-in. A Claude subscription (CLI or token) adds the Chinese summaries and resolves Chinese-prose tweets — without it the digest still ships in English.
| Source | Signal | How | Key |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Trending | today's global rank + star velocity + per-language | public HTML | — |
| Hacker News | what devs are discussing now | Algolia API | — |
| GitHub Search | brand-new repos gaining stars | official API | — |
| Lobsters | curated programming community | hottest.json | — |
| X / Twitter | tools shared by curated accounts | Firecrawl scrape (free, keyless) | — |
| r/commandline, r/selfhosted, … | OAuth API | REDDIT_CLIENT_ID + REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET |
The X layer is the one that catches an already-popular tool being re-shared
(the "I saw it on X" case). Chinese tool accounts rarely link GitHub directly —
they describe the tool in prose — so the LLM extracts the tool name and a GitHub
search, disambiguated by the star count mentioned in the post, resolves the real
repo (e.g. "记忆宫殿 55K star" → MemPalace/mempalace). A free FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
raises rate limits if the keyless tier starts returning 429s.
Discovery remains broad but fresh: stale weekly Trending entries and undated web listicles are excluded, and X/Lobsters items must be no more than 48 hours old. A repo is delivered only when it reaches one of two explicit tiers:
- Tier A / must-see: global Trending top 3; at least 500 stars/day; HN 200, X 300, Reddit 750, or Lobsters 100 engagement; a new repo already at 2,000 stars; or moderate activity from at least two independently active source families. Every Tier A item is sent, up to the ten-item safety cap.
- Tier B / notable: at least 250 stars/day; HN 100, X 100, Reddit 300, or Lobsters 50 engagement; or a new repo already at 1,000 stars. Tier B only fills the alert to the normal target of five—it never displaces Tier A or extends an alert that already contains five Tier A items.
A 90-day memory stops old projects recycling into the alert. Any single source can fail or be disabled without affecting the rest.
The included workflow (.github/workflows/radar.yml) runs daily at 08:00 Taipei
on GitHub's servers, emails you the digest, commits a browsable copy to
digests/, and persists the de-dup memory in state/.
Setup — Repo → Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions, add:
| Secret | Value |
|---|---|
GMAIL_USER |
your gmail address |
GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD |
a Gmail App Password (needs 2FA) |
GITHUB_TOKEN is injected automatically (lifts the API limit to 5000/hr). Trigger
a run any time from the Actions tab → gh-radar → Run workflow.
cd gh-radar
cp config.example.env config.env # then fill in SMTP_PASS (Gmail App Password)
./run.sh # run once; missing SMTP prints the digest and exits failed
./install.sh 8 # schedule daily at 08:00 via cronThe run reports one fixed status: sent, no_new, already_completed, or
failure. GitHub Actions also appends that status to GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY
without addresses, secrets, or exception details. Missing SMTP configuration
prints the digest; failed delivery raises an error. Neither updates the de-dup
state, so a later run can retry it.
Zero pip dependencies — Python 3.9+ standard library only.
gh-radar: collecting…
trending: 120 repos
hn: 91 repos
new: 30 repos
lobsters: 1 repos
x: 3 repos
✓ X: 3 repo(s) resolved from prose tweets
important: 6 Tier A + 4 Tier B qualified; selected 6 Tier A + 0 Tier B from 147 repos
✓ Chinese summaries: 6/6
✓ emailed digest to [email protected]
### 1. [MemPalace/mempalace](https://github.com/MemPalace/mempalace)
⭐ 55,992 · 𝕏 @axichuhai
> 將 AI 長期記憶從摘要快取改造成可翻閱的檔案空間，本地運行、近乎零成本。
> _A memory palace for AI agents — a browsable archive replacing summary caches._
📍 出處 / via: Firecrawl → X @axichuhai
[X post](https://x.com/axichuhai/status/...)All via env (see config.example.env):
GITHUB_TOKEN— recommended: lifts API limit 60→5000/hr. Without it, enrich rate-limits and only the Trending source survives.FIRECRAWL_API_KEY— optional: lifts Firecrawl's keyless 429 cap for X.CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN— optional: enables Chinese summaries + X-prose resolution.SMTP_*/EMAIL_TO— Gmail App Password delivery (EMAIL_TO falls back to SMTP_USER).MIN_STARS(30),SEEN_TTL_DAYS(90),GH_RADAR_TARGET_ITEMS(5),GH_RADAR_SAFETY_CAP(10),GH_RADAR_EVERGREEN_STARS(50000) — tuning.GH_RADAR_TOP_TRENDING_RANK(3),GH_RADAR_MOMENTUM_STARS_PER_DAY(250),GH_RADAR_STRONG_HN_POINTS(100), and the otherGH_RADAR_STRONG_*knobs — Tier B thresholds.GH_RADAR_MUST_SEND_STARS_PER_DAY(500),GH_RADAR_MUST_SEND_HN_POINTS(200), and the otherGH_RADAR_MUST_SEND_*knobs — Tier A thresholds. A quiet run sends no email.- A selected digest is marked complete only after SMTP delivery succeeds. A
missing or failed SMTP configuration is a failed run and does not update
state/seen.jsonorstate/last-run. GH_RADAR_SOURCE_MAX_AGE_HOURS(48),GH_RADAR_NEW_REPO_MAX_AGE_DAYS(7) — explicit source freshness windows.GH_RADAR_TIMEZONE(Asia/Taipei) — calendar date used by the daily sentinel and digest filename, independent of the GitHub runner's UTC clock.GH_RADAR_X_ACCOUNTS,GH_RADAR_SUBREDDITS,GH_RADAR_TREND_LANGS— what each source watches.GH_RADAR_VAULT/GH_RADAR_DIGEST_DIR— also save each digest as Markdown.
A single radar.py shim (keeps python radar.py working) over the gh_radar/
package:
gh_radar/
config.py constants, scoring weights (config.W), env helpers
models.py the Repo dataclass — typed core model (merge() rejects unknown keys)
clients.py github / firecrawl / claude / http — every call degrades to None
sources.py one src_*() per signal; SOURCES table; enrich()
scoring.py Tier A/B classification + ranking + evergreen-noise filter
state.py de-dup memory (seen.json), atomic writes
render.py zh summaries, Markdown digest, HTML
email_out.py SMTP delivery
cli.py collect → select → render → email → remember
Standard library only — zero pip dependencies.
- GitHub Trending has no official API, so that source is an HTML scrape that can break on a redesign. The other five keep the digest alive if it does.
- No
GITHUB_TOKEN= trending-only. Without a token the GitHub API rate-limits and every non-trending repo is dropped at the enrich step. CI injects one. - X prose resolution needs Claude. Without the CLI/token, X keeps only tweets that link a repo directly; Chinese-prose tools are skipped (graceful).
- Precision wins over recall. Weekly Trending and generic "best tools" listicles are intentionally excluded because neither proves that a repo matters now. X posts without a verifiably recent status ID are also dropped.
score = stars_today # trending velocity
+ 2 × hn_points # discussion = strong "people care" signal
+ 120 if shared on a curated X acct # a human you follow chose it — strongest
+ 15 × min(x_mentions, 5)
+ 0.02 × min(reddit_points, 1000)
+ 0.3 × min(lobsters_score, 200)
+ 40 if brand-new repo # novelty
+ 0.01 × min(stars, 5000) # mild popularity tiebreak
+ 15 × (number of sources) # multi-source = stronger signal
+ 100–300 for global Trending #3–#1
Qualification and delivery size are separate: Tier A expands from 1–10 items; Tier B fills only up to the five-item target. A 90-day memory stops repeats.