Star velocity, measured daily.
Afterglow reads the public star count of every repo it tracks, once a day, and keeps every reading. The numbers come back as a README badge and as a leaderboard.
What this is
GitHub restricted stargazer lists on 30 June 2026, and star history went with them. Aggregate counts are still public, so those are what we snapshot, daily, and a snapshot is never deleted.
History cannot be backfilled. Nobody can go back and observe what a star count was last Tuesday, which is what makes this the only comprehensive, cross-ecosystem accumulating series, and makes every tracked day a day nobody can catch up on.
Every number here carries its fidelity. A measured velocity comes from two readings at least half a day apart. Anything weaker is labeled and stays grey: a young repo shows its lifetime average marked ~avg, a repo on its first reading says it is still measuring. We would rather print less than print a number we would have to retract.
Put it in your README
One URL. No token, and it works for repos you do not own. The badge links back here, which is how the next maintainer who sees it finds this page.
[](https://afterglow.watch)
Swap OWNER/REPO for your own repo's name. Tracking a repo through the form below answers with this snippet already filled in.
More styles: flat-square, for-the-badge, social
Each is drawn here at its own ?style=. Whichever the style, the words and colours stay the pill's own, amber for measured and grey for anything weaker, and each is one render everywhere, the way the rest of a badge row is.
flat-square, corners squared for a badge row already set that way:
[](https://afterglow.watch)
for-the-badge, the tall one:
[](https://afterglow.watch)
social, GitHub's own button-and-bubble shape, the count in the button and the day's velocity alone in the bubble:
[](https://afterglow.watch)
There is also the card, with its 30-day sparkline. It comes in a light and a dark version, and this block serves each reader whichever their system asks for:
<a href="https://afterglow.watch"><picture>
<source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://afterglow.watch/badge/OWNER/REPO?style=card&theme=dark">
<img alt="stars" src="https://afterglow.watch/badge/OWNER/REPO?style=card" width="420" height="150">
</picture></a>
That is GitHub's own pattern for theme-aware images, and it is the default way to embed the card. A bare ?style=card URL stays light, and ?theme=dark pins it dark, for a README that is one color on purpose.
The whole history, not just the last 30 days
?style=history keeps that header and grows the sparkline into a square: every reading since we first saw the repo, left to right in real time, so the slope of the line is the speed it gained them.
<a href="https://afterglow.watch"><picture>
<source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://afterglow.watch/badge/OWNER/REPO?style=history&theme=dark">
<img alt="star history" src="https://afterglow.watch/badge/OWNER/REPO?style=history" width="420" height="420">
</picture></a>
It starts the day tracking started, not the day the repo did. Nothing before that was ours to measure, and the two dates under the chart say which days it covers.
Any other style shields draws, plastic to colours of your choosing, comes through their endpoint pattern pointed at our numbers; add &style= and &color= to taste:
[](https://afterglow.watch)If your README still points at the dead star-history embed, edit the hostname and change nothing else:
https://afterglow.watch/svg?repos=tt-a1i/archify&type=DateA badge request for a repo we have not seen before is what starts it being tracked. The first render says tracking has just started, and the series builds from there.
If your repo is mostly Markdown, a skills collection say, GitHub files it under whatever scripts it finds, or under nothing. *.md linguist-detectable in .gitattributes fixes the label, on your repo page and on our rankings.
Track a repo
We enroll a fixed number of repos a day. Past that a submission goes into the queue and enrolls over the next days, rather than being dropped.
The leaderboard
Repos from 2,000 stars, ranked by stars per day. We track more than we rank: every young repo from 500 stars up is in the store, so whatever catches fire next arrives with its takeoff already recorded. A repo somebody asked us to track sits on the board at any size. Open the rankings.
Opting out
If you maintain a repo and you would rather it was not here, write to hello@afterglow.watch from an address that ties you to the repo. A person checks it by hand. After that the badge reads not tracked and the repo is gone from the rankings.
Readings already taken stay in the store, because nothing is ever deleted from it. Nothing further is collected, and nothing is shown.