I Built a GitHub Achievement Automation Toolkit (CLI + Local Dashboard)

Raja Irfan Ahmed — Sun, 10 May 2026 13:10:46 +0000

Have you ever looked at a GitHub profile and wondered how people get badges like Pull Shark, Galaxy Brain, and Quickdraw?? If so, this post is for you.

I created a toolkit that automates GitHub achievement tasks. You can use it from your terminal or a local browser dashboard. No cloud, no third-party service; your tokens stay on your machine.

What It Does

The toolkit handles the repetitive GitHub actions that trigger achievement milestones

Pair Extraordinaire — co-authored commits on merged PRs (tiers: 1 / 10 / 24 / 48)
Pull Shark — merged pull requests (tiers: 2 / 16 / 128 / 1024)
Galaxy Brain — accepted answers in Discussions (tiers: 2 / 8 / 16 / 32)
Quickdraw — close an issue within 5 minutes (single tier)
YOLO — merge a PR without a code review (single tier)
Starstruck — star milestones on one repository (tiers: 16 / 128 / 512 / 4096)
Public Sponsor — verifies your public sponsorship status

You run it from the CLI or the dashboard. It checks your GitHub REST rate limit first. Then, it uses delays and controls to avoid throttling. It also shows the API reset ETA live.

Two Modes

CLI (npm start) — Terminal menus powered by Ink. Use them for setup, running achievements, checking status, and repo helpers.

Dashboard (npm run web:dev) — A local Next.js app (port 3000) with four tabs

Tab	What it shows
Overview	.env check, token validity, repo access, Discussions status, rate limit
Achievements	Pick a tier, hit Run or Resume — one job is active at a time
History	Paginated local log with links to GitHub
Settings	Env summary (no secrets shown)

The "Stop run" button is cooperative. It waits for the current GitHub request to finish before stopping. No hard kills, no broken states.

How It Works (Two Accounts Required)

You need two GitHub accounts: a main account (where the badges appear) and a helper account (acts as the second party for co-authoring, PR reviews, discussion answers, etc.).

The main account owns a test repository. The team adds the helper as a collaborator with write access. Each account gets its own Personal Access Token (classic).

GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your_main_account_token
GITHUB_USERNAME=your-main-username
TARGET_REPO=your-main-username/your-test-repo-name
HELPER_TOKEN=ghp_your_helper_account_token

Both tokens stay in a .env file on your machine; never committed, never sent anywhere.

Quick Setup (4 Steps)

Part A — Main account + test repo

Create a new repo under your main account
Enable Discussions: Repo Settings → General → Features → Discussions (needed for Galaxy Brain)
Note your TARGET_REPO as username/repo-name (not the full URL)

Part B — Helper account + collaborator invite

Log in as your helper account
From your main account: repo Settings → Collaborators → invite the helper with write access
Accept the invite from the helper account

Part C — Generate tokens

Main account token: scope repo
Helper account token: scopes repo + write:discussion

Part D — Install and run

git clone https://github.com/rajairfanahmed/github-achievement-unlocker-badge-automation-toolkit
cd github-achievement-unlocker-badge-automation-toolkit
npm install      # automatically creates .env from .env.example
# fill in your .env values
npm start        # CLI
npm run web:dev  # Dashboard at localhost:3000

A Note on Public Sponsor and Starstruck

We manage these two in distinct ways. The tool does not provide hacks or shortcuts for them.

Public Sponsor — You sponsor on GitHub first (real sponsorship). The tool only verifies your account's public sponsor state afterward.

Starstruck — Requires real stars from real users. The tool can poll your star count and help you track progress, but the stars have to be genuine.

Local State, Not GitHub State

The system saves progress to achievements-data-<username>.json in the project root. Git has ignored this file. It tracks local operation history and tier progress. It does not interact with GitHub's badge system in a direct manner. GitHub awards badges on its end based on the actual actions performed.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Wrong	Right
`TARGET_REPO=https://github.com/user/repo`	`TARGET_REPO=user/repo`
Same token for both accounts	Separate tokens, separate accounts
Helper invited but invite not accepted	Helper must accept the invite
`GITHUB_TOKEN="ghp_..."` with quotes	`GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_...` without quotes

Built On

This project is based on and improved from the original work by n0.

This version includes several updates

A local Next.js dashboard
A live rate limit display
Achievement cards with tier protection (finished tiers can't be rerun)
Cooperative stop behavior
History pagination
Post-install bootstrap for .env

Requirements

Node.js 18+
npm
Two GitHub accounts
A test repository owned by the main account

Repo

Everything is open source. Check the setup guide, the .env.example, and the dashboard at:

👉 github.com/rajairfanahmed/github-achievement-unlocker-badge-automation-toolkit

If this saves you time, drop a star — it helps others find it.

🚀I Built a Chrome Extension That Runs Entire Coursera Courses on Autopilot

Raja Irfan Ahmed — Sun, 10 May 2026 12:54:38 +0000

🚀 I Built a Chrome Extension That Automates Entire Coursera Courses

If you have ever taken a course on Coursera, you know the routine.

Play a video. Wait. Click next. Open a reading. Mark it complete. Start a quiz. Repeat

After a while, it doesn’t feel like learning — it feels like doing the same actions again and again.

So I decided to build something for it.

💡 The Idea

I didn’t want a small automation script.

I needed a tool that could manage a whole course from beginning to end. I wanted it to work without needing me to intervene all the time.

Something that could:

1. Navigate through lessons without manual input.
2. Handle videos, readings, and quizzes
3. And continue running without breaking

A one-click autopilot specifically designed for managing courses.

⚙️ What It Does?

Once you start it, the extension takes over.

🎬 Plays videos with automatic playback and speed control.
⏭ Moves to the next lesson when done
📖 Marks readings as complete
🧠 Solves quizzes using AI
🔁 Keeps progressing until the course is finished

You don’t need to keep clicking anything.

🧠 AI Quiz Solving

This was the most interesting part to build.

The extension:

Extracts questions directly from the page
Sends them to AI (Claude or ChatGPT)
Parses the response
Fills answers automatically

You can also use it more safely:

Fill in answers only
Review them yourself before submitting

🧩 The Real Challenge

Automation sounds simple, but real websites are messy.

Things break easily

Videos pause randomly
Buttons change behavior
Quizzes have different formats
Pages don’t always load the same way

The goal wasn’t just automation — it was making it stable.

So a lot of effort went into:

Detecting what is happening on the page
Handling edge cases
Preventing loops and failures
Keeping everything running smoothly

🔄 How I Approached It?

Instead of treating everything differently, I simplified the logic.

Every step in a course is just one of these:

Video
Reading
Quiz

So the system keeps checking:

> “What type of page is this, and what should I do next?”

That made the whole flow predictable and easier to control.

⚡ Why I Built This?

Mainly to remove friction

When something is repetitive, it kills momentum.

This tool doesn’t skip learning. Instead, it cuts out pointless manual tasks.

## 💭 Final Thoughts

This project ended up being more than I expected.

It wasn’t just about automation, but about:

Building something that runs continuously
Handling real-world unpredictability
Integrating AI in a practical way

And the primary goal is to create something genuinely useful.

## 🔗 Project Link

If you want to check it out or try it

👉 Coursera Automation Tool

DEV Community: Raja Irfan Ahmed