I launched an open source CLI tool with zero audience — here's what happened in 10 days

#python #opensource #showdev #beginners

10 days ago I posted about a tool I built on LinkedIn. I had no prior posts and no history of sharing my work online. I just wanted to see if anyone cared.

The tool is fast-copy — a Python CLI for high-speed file transfers with block-order I/O, content-aware deduplication, and SSH tar streaming. I wrote about the technical details in my previous article.

This post is about what happened after I hit publish.

The numbers

After 10 days, with no ads, no influencers, and no growth hacks:

557 total clones from 202 unique users on GitHub
100 unique visitors on the repo
14 people read the full source code
175 readers on my dev.to article
Organic traffic from Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Kagi, Reddit, and Hacker News
People I've never met shared it in Slack channels and Teams groups at their workplaces

All from one LinkedIn post, one dev.to article, and one Hacker News submission.

What actually worked

LinkedIn surprised me

I expected zero engagement. Instead, the post reached 676 people and got almost 1,000 impressions. The "problem-first" format worked — I opened with "I got tired of watching cp -r crawl on a 60K-file directory" and that hooked people who recognized the pain.

Dev.to was the slow burn winner

My article here didn't get much traction in the first few days. Then around day 5, it spiked to 70 readers in a single day. Google and DuckDuckGo started indexing it and now send 20+ views each without me doing anything. This is the platform that will keep working months from now.

Hacker News was humbling

I submitted a Show HN post. It got 2 points and zero comments. But it still sent 14 unique visitors to my repo — and those were high-quality visitors who dug deep into the source code and releases page. HN is hard to crack, but even a "failed" post there has impact.

Reddit was a rollercoaster

My r/python post got removed by the spam filter. I messaged the mods, waited days, and it eventually got approved. It's slowly getting traction now — 6 unique visitors so far. Patience is key.

What I learned

1. People don't comment — they clone.

Across all platforms, I got almost zero comments. For days I thought nobody cared. But 200+ people downloaded the code. Developers are silent users — they evaluate with their terminal, not their keyboard.

2. One post triggers a chain reaction.

LinkedIn → Hacker News → dev.to → search engines → Reddit. Each platform fed the next. You don't need to go viral on one platform — you need presence on several.

3. Search engines are the long game.

The first week was all social media traffic. By day 10, Google and DuckDuckGo were sending consistent daily traffic. That will compound. An article or repo that ranks for "rsync alternative" or "fast file copy Python" will bring visitors for years.

4. Benchmarks > descriptions.

The single most effective thing in my posts was the real benchmark: "92K files, 888MB, copied in 17.9 seconds." People respond to numbers, not feature lists.

5. Ship binaries.

Adding pre-built executables for Linux, macOS, and Windows using GitHub Actions made a visible difference. The releases page is one of the most visited pages on the repo. Lower the barrier and people will try your tool.