Description: "I stopped decorating my GitHub profile and started shipping it like a product page. Four apps, four download buttons, zero widgets."
I [stopped / spent a weekend] treating my GitHub profile like a résumé and started treating it like a product page.
Now a stranger lands on it and can download one of my four apps before they finish reading my name.
👉 Live: github.com/Akhouri-Anmol-Kumar
Credit: the spark to push my profile past badges came from Giorgi Kobaidze's cyberpunk-console post. Go read it.
The problem with every "awesome" profile
Open ten popular profile READMEs. You'll see the same things:
- a wall of badges
- a stats card that shows commit counts
- a "Hi 👋 I'm ___" line
- a snake eating your contribution graph
They're decorations. None of them answer the question every visitor has in the first three seconds:
"What can I get from this person, right now?"
I build desktop apps: ATLOCK, APIC, ANOTE and ACALCU. So I asked myself a different question:
What if my README worked like an app store listing?
The 5 Rules of a Storefront README
Rule 1: The 3-Second Download Test
If someone can't download your best work within 3 seconds of landing, the page has failed.
So each of my apps gets its own card, and directly under every card is a download button that points to the actual .zip release. There's no "see releases" and no hunting.
<td align="center">
<a href="https://github.com/USER/APP">
<img src="assets/app_card.svg" width="408" alt="APP">
</a><br>
<a href="https://github.com/USER/APP/releases/download/TAG/APP.zip">
<img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/⬇%20DOWNLOAD%20APP-B8935F?style=for-the-badge&labelColor=8a6c3f&logo=windows&logoColor=white" height="38">
</a>
</td>
Card on top, action underneath. It's the same pattern as a store listing.
Rule 2: Pick one metal and never leave it
Mine is gold: #B8935F for the light tone and #8a6c3f for the shadow.
The ring-light logo, the section headers, the buttons and the card edges all use it. Because every element shares one palette, the page looks designed rather than assembled.
Badges look cheap because they're every color at once.
Rule 3: One width, everywhere
Every full-width image on my profile is 830px. That's the entire layout system.
Nothing is slightly wider or narrower than its neighbour, so the page reads as one column instead of a pile of widgets. The app cards are 408px, which is two cards plus a gutter inside that same 830.
If you only copy one rule from this post, copy this one.
Rule 4: Name your sections like paths
My headers aren't "About Me" and "Projects". They are:
~/links
~/apps
~/status
~/stack
It costs nothing, and it tells a developer in half a second that the person behind the page lives in a terminal. It also makes the page scannable, because every header looks the same and sits in the same place.
Rule 5: Make your manifesto a design element, not a paragraph
Right in the middle of the page I put one banner:
Zero telemetry. Zero cloud. Zero subscriptions. Zero ads.
It isn't a bio line. It's the whole product philosophy, rendered as a full-width image. And the page closes with one sentence:
Your machine. Your data. Your control.
Visitors don't remember bullet lists. They remember a line they could repeat.
The "no widgets" decision
I made one hard choice: every visual on my page lives in my own repo.
No stat cards from someone else's server. No streak counters that go blank when a free service sleeps. No images that vanish when a third party changes a URL.
My cards, headers, hero and footer are all SVGs in /assets, and the only outside piece is the download badge. (If I ever need to remove even that, I can swap in my own SVG.)
Two details that matter:
-
I use absolute
raw.githubusercontent.comURLs for images, so the README still renders if it's copied, mirrored or previewed somewhere else. - Everything has alt text, including the manifesto banner, so the page works for screen readers and for people whose images fail to load.
The structure at a glance
[ ring-light logo ]
[ hero: whoami ]
[ ~/links → Website · Blog · LinkedIn · Peerlist · Instagram ]
[ ~/apps → 2×2 grid of cards, each with a DOWNLOAD button ]
[ ~/status → ZERO telemetry banner ]
[ ~/stack → tech stack ]
[ footer → "Your machine. Your data. Your control." ]
Only six sections and one action per app. Nothing on the page is there just to fill space.
Here's the challenge. Your profile has one job. Find it, then make that job a button.
- Selling apps? Put a download button under each one.
- A writer? Put your three best posts as cards.
- A library author? Put
npm i your-libas the hero.
Then drop your link in the comments and tell me the one action your page is built around. I'll read every one.
Stop decorating your profile and start shipping it. 🚀
I'm Anmol, and I build privacy-first desktop software at Akhouri Systems.
🌐 Website · 💼 LinkedIn · 🔒 ATLOCK
Top comments (3)
I really like it, it's well-organized and impactful. It’s certainly not my style (it reminds me of cyberpunk), but it’s perfect for what you’re working on.🦾
yeah, I make it feel like a premium readme and a great storefront combo.
Thanks for the mention. I really like your version, you nailed it!🔥