Your developer career as a scroll story, including the work GitHub can't show.
Open source · hosted at starring.dev, free on GitHub Pages, or self-hosted with accounts

See a profile · Try the editor · Get a stage on starring.dev · Use this template · 5-minute setup · Contribute

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Most working developers' best code sits in private repos: client projects, the agency's self-hosted GitLab, work under NDA. Your GitHub profile shows only the small public part.

Starring shows the whole career on one page. It covers the clients you can name, the projects you can't show, your public repos, school and stack, and it's designed so people remember it.

Try it now: open the editor and start from your GitHub username, or browse the sample profiles Nova and Milo. Until you sign in, your draft stays in your browser.

Three ways to use it

	starring.dev	Your own GitHub Pages	Self-hosted
What it is	The hosted instance: sign up, claim starring.dev/<you>, publish	A static site from this template, one YAML file per person	Your own instance with accounts, for a team, agency or community
Your data	In the instance's Postgres; export it anytime	A file in your repo	In your Postgres
Cost	Free during the beta	Free	Your server
Start	Request access (private beta)	5-minute setup	Docker Compose

What you get

• A scroll story in acts. Hero, the numbers, the client wall, the timeline, featured work (with screenshots and live links), accolades (awards and certifications), press tour (talks, articles, podcasts, books), activity, school, skills and languages, behind the scenes (hobbies), the critics (testimonials), and closing credits. Empty sections simply don't appear.
• Proper NDA handling. You name the client and describe the impact. The code, internal links and diagrams appear as redaction bars.
• Public and private, side by side. It shows "73% of this work lives in private repos" and makes that the headline instead of an excuse.
• An instant draft from GitHub. Type a username and get your name, links, top repos, languages and topics in seconds.
• A visual editor with a live preview at desktop, tablet and phone sizes. It has drag and drop, undo, validation and a "stage ready" score.
• Your data stays a file. A profile is one readable YAML file in your repo. There's no account and no lock-in.
• Static and fast. Built with Astro and no client JS on profile pages. It deploys to GitHub Pages with the included workflow.
• Know who's watching. On a hosted instance, owners see their page's visitors, sources (LinkedIn, GitHub…) and countries. The data comes from the instance's cookieless Plausible.

Your own Starring site in 5 minutes

1. Click Use this template to create your own repo.
2. Open the editor: use the hosted one, or run it locally with npm install && npm run dev and open /edit.
3. Choose Start from → GitHub profile to get an instant draft. Then add the parts GitHub can't see: clients, NDA projects, your timeline, school.
4. Press Export .yaml (⌘S) and save the file as profiles/<your-handle>.yaml. With exactly one file in profiles/, your profile becomes the home page.
5. In your repo, open Settings → Pages → Build and deployment and set Source: GitHub Actions.
6. Push to main. The site goes live at https://<user>.github.io/<repo>/. Name the repo <user>.github.io to serve it from the root, or add a custom domain.

The Pages workflow reads the correct site and base from GitHub, so project pages, user pages and custom domains all work without editing config.

Self-host it with accounts

Want a Starring instance where people sign up, claim a handle and publish without touching git? Run it in server mode with Postgres:

cp .env.example .env   # set BETTER_AUTH_URL, BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, POSTGRES_PASSWORD
docker compose up -d

What you get:

• Accounts: email and password sign-up (GitHub and GitLab sign-in optional), with password reset and address confirmation over your own SMTP server (email setup).
• Profiles: autosave to Postgres, publish and unpublish, and a public directory at /explore.
• Private beta: ALLOW_SIGNUP=false makes visitors request access. You invite them from /admin and nothing needs redeploying.
• Moderation: visitors can report profiles, and admins can hide them. Blocked handles stop impersonation.
• Privacy built in: a terms and privacy page with your operator details, Download my data, and account deletion.
• Ready for production: security headers and CSP, GET /api/health for your orchestrator, and a prebuilt multi-arch image on GHCR.
• Optional owner stats from your Plausible.

The editor and the scroll story are the same as in static mode.

For Dokploy, plain Node and all the settings, see docs/self-hosting.md.

Run it locally

npm install
npm run dev     # http://localhost:4321  (editor at /edit)
npm run build   # static site in dist/

Requires Node 22.22 or newer.

A profile is one YAML file

handle: nova
theme: acid            # any folder in src/themes/ — see /themes
profile:
  name: Nova Kováč
  role: Senior Frontend & Platform Engineer
  tagline: Eleven years shipping pixels for people who print money and stories.
clients:
  - { name: Northwind Pictures, sector: Film & TV, nda: true }
projects:
  - title: Premiere Night Streaming Hub
    client: Northwind Pictures
    visibility: nda    # public | private | nda
    blurb: Global launch platform for a blockbuster franchise.
    impact: [18M visits launch week, 99.98% uptime]

For a full example, see examples/nova.yaml, which shows every section.

profiles/ contains	Home page shows
nothing	demo: the samples from examples/
one file	that profile, so the repo works as a personal site
several files	a directory of all profiles, each at /<handle>

Sharing, SEO and embeds

Every profile is ready to be shared:

• A movie-poster preview image (/og/<handle>.png, 1200×630). It's generated at build time, or on request in server mode, in the profile's theme colours, and it shows up on LinkedIn, X, Slack and Discord.

• Search metadata:

  • schema.org ProfilePage + Person JSON-LD (job title, sameAs links, skills, employer, schools, open-source repos),
  • canonical URLs,
  • sitemap.xml and robots.txt,
  • noindex on the editor and account pages.

• Your own analytics: connect your Plausible (plausible.io or self-hosted) in the editor (Headliner → Analytics) to see who visits your stage. Only a page view is sent through Plausible's Events API, and no third-party script runs on the page.

• An embeddable card for blogs, portfolios and Notion:

  <iframe src="https://<your-site>/<handle>/card/" width="600" height="340" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy"></iframe>

  In server mode there's also an oEmbed endpoint (/oembed?url=…), so tools that support oEmbed can embed a profile from its URL.

Themes

Six themes ship today: Acid, Blood, Ice, Paper (light, editorial serif), VHS (scanlines and chromatic edges) and Broadway (gold marquee bulbs). You can browse them in the theme gallery or try one in the editor.

A theme is a folder with 7 colour tokens, 3 Google Fonts and optional CSS. To create one:

npm run new:theme -- noir "Film Noir"

It appears in the gallery and the editor straight away. See CONTRIBUTING → Add a theme.

Visual editor

Open /edit, /edit?new for a blank profile, /edit?from=<handle> to edit an existing one, or /edit?github=<username> to start from GitHub.

• Live preview. The preview renders the same ProfileStory component as the published page. The layout uses container queries, so the phone view really reflows. Click any section in the preview to jump to its form.
• Editing. Cards can be dragged to reorder, duplicated, or deleted, and deletes can be undone. Tag inputs suggest clients you've already added. Picking an NDA client switches the project to NDA.
• Validation and readiness. Errors appear as you type, with a badge per section. A "Stage ready" checklist shows what's still missing.
• Undo, import and export. ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z undo and redo, and drafts autosave in your browser. You can paste, pick or drop YAML/JSON to import. ⌘S exports <handle>.yaml.

Importers

GitHub (src/lib/importers/github.ts) runs in the browser or in Node. It talks only to api.github.com.

• It imports your profile, links, your top 4 own repos as featured projects (stars and forks become impact numbers), and your languages and topics as skills.
• With an optional read:user token, it also imports exact contributions per year, including the private count GitHub reports when Include private contributions is on. The token is never stored.
• Merge into current refreshes GitHub data and keeps your clients, timeline and NDA work.

GitLab (src/lib/importers/gitlab.ts): Start from → GitLab profile… in the editor, for gitlab.com or a self-hosted GitLab. It runs in the browser and talks only to that instance's /api/v4.

• It imports your name, your best own projects as featured work (stars and topics), the other projects you contributed to as guest appearances, and your public activity of the last three years (GitLab keeps events that long) as yearly counts.
• gitlab.com shares bio, location, links and job title only with a token: add an optional read_user token, which is never stored.
• A self-hosted GitLab must allow cross-origin API requests, which GitLab does by default. If it doesn't, use starring scan below.
• Merge into current adds GitLab and keeps your GitHub work, clients, timeline, yearly numbers and NDA work.

Bitbucket (src/lib/importers/bitbucket.ts): Start from → Bitbucket workspace… in the editor. It runs in the browser and talks only to api.bitbucket.org.

• It imports the workspace's repositories as featured work (described and busiest first, forks skipped), their languages as skills, and your commits per year in the six most recently updated ones.
• Without a token it reads public repositories only and matches your commits by the workspace name. With an Atlassian API token and your Atlassian email, it adds private repositories (as private work, never linked) and counts exactly your commits. A workspace access token works too. Tokens are never stored.
• Bitbucket has no profile bio, location or role, so fill those in.

Private work, starring scan (cli/): this is the part GitHub can't show.

npx starring-cli scan ~/work ~/clients -e me@agency.com --check-public

It counts your commits in local repos, including client work and a self-hosted GitLab, de-duplicated across clones. It writes only dates and counts to starring-activity.json: no code, messages, repo names or emails, and nothing is uploaded. --check-public asks GitHub, GitLab.com and Codeberg which of your repos are public, so open-source work counts as public and private work as private. Drop the file into the editor's import, and your private commits per year, platforms and a real commits-per-day heatmap show up on your stage.

What GitHub knows, starring discover: the editor's Find updates from your terminal, with GITHUB_TOKEN or your gh login. It lists the projects (from every year), guest appearances, star counts and yearly numbers your profile is missing, and with -o writes a copy of your YAML with them added. npx starring-cli discover -p you.yaml -o you.updated.yaml (details)

LinkedIn: request your data export (LinkedIn → Settings → Data privacy → Get a copy of your data, pick Profile, Positions, Education, Skills, or simply the whole archive). Then drop the ZIP into the editor's import to fill your name, role, career timeline, education, skills, certifications, honors, languages, publications and recommendations. It happens entirely in your browser, and only those profile files are read: messages and connections are never opened.

Your CV, with AI (hosted and self-hosted with a key): upload a PDF or Word CV, or paste any text, such as your LinkedIn About and experience or a bio. Claude or OpenAI turns it into a draft: roles, clients, NDA projects, school, skills, certifications, awards and languages. It uses only what the document says, and you review everything in the editor. Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY to enable it (settings).

JSON Resume: paste or drop a resume.json into the import dialog to fill your timeline, education, skills, projects, awards, certificates, publications, languages, interests and references. Contributed by @dailyun.

Planned: a Gitea/Forgejo importer.

Roadmap

• Scroll story with acts, NDA redaction and public/private split
• Visual editor with live, responsive preview
• Instant draft from GitHub
• GitHub Pages template workflow
• Theme plugins (src/themes/<id>) and a theme gallery
• Movie-poster Open Graph image per profile, JSON-LD, sitemap, embeddable card + oEmbed
• GitLab importer (gitlab.com + self-hosted)
• Bitbucket importer
• Gitea/Forgejo importer
• Local starring scan CLI for private repos, with a real heatmap
• Server mode: sign up (email, GitHub, GitLab), claim a handle, autosave to Postgres, publish
• Hosted instance at starring.dev, with a private beta, invites, moderation and owner stats
• Custom domains for profiles (you.dev → your stage), verified by DNS, with an on-demand TLS check for the proxy
• Career trailer: a 30-second film cut from the profile (Blockbuster or Noir), exported as MP4 in the browser for LinkedIn, Stories and Reels
• Printable one-page CV with a QR code back to the stage
• Translations

Architecture

The pages read profiles only through a ProfileStore interface (src/lib/profiles.ts). In static mode the store reads YAML files. In server mode the same JSON document lives in Postgres, next to any YAML files. The pages and the editor are identical in both modes.

YAML files ─┐   ┌──────────────┐   ┌─► /<handle>   scroll story (static HTML)
            ├──►│ ProfileStore │───┤
Postgres  ──┘   └──────────────┘   └─► /            home: demo · personal · directory
(server mode)        ▲
                     │ same Profile model (src/lib/model.ts)
                /edit visual editor ── importers (GitHub, …)

Contributing

Contributions of every size are welcome. Good places to start:

• A theme. Run npm run new:theme -- <id>, pick 7 colours and 3 fonts, and open a PR. This is the easiest first PR.
• An importer for Gitea/Forgejo (#9) or Bitbucket. Each one is a small, self-contained module.
• Translations of the story labels (#11).
• Bug reports with a profile YAML that renders wrong.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup and conventions. Issues labelled good first issue are a good starting point.

A note on client names

Saying you worked on a project for a company is usually fine. Showing its logo or describing internals can breach an NDA or trademark rules. Starring renders client names as text only, and the nda flag removes links and details. Check your contracts.

Brand

The mark is a five-point star, the Walk of Fame kind, cut out of an acid tile: the headline act. It's legible from a 16 px browser tab to an app icon, acid on dark and ink on light. The wordmark is a lowercase Space Grotesk starring. You'll find the assets in public/brand/ (logo.svg, logo-light.svg, mark.svg, app-icon.png) and the brand sheet. Run npm run brand to regenerate them.

License

MIT