What I Learned Running 3 Open Source Projects Simultaneously

Disclosure: I work on OpenNomos, a platform for contributor-driven open source growth.

Two weeks ago I was running one project. Now I am running three. Here is what changed and what I learned.

The Setup

I am building in public on Twitter, covering three different open source tools:

• OpenNomos Json — a developer toolset
• PaperList — an AI/ML paper search engine
• Swipe Cleaner — an iOS utility for photo cleanup

Three different audiences, three different value props, one person.

The 3-Project Constraint

The immediate concern was Twitter burnout. Posting about one project daily is doable. Three? That risks looking spammy. So the rule became: max 3 tweets per day, each about a different project.

This constraint forced quality over quantity.

What Actually Works

1. Different angles for different projects. Each project has a natural angle — Json for developer efficiency, PaperList for research workflow, Swipe Cleaner for interaction design.

2. Build in Public communities amplify reach. Posting each tweet into topic-specific communities adds context that generic hashtags do not.

3. Cross-project learning accelerates everything. Fixing a UX issue on Json taught me something that improved how I talk about PaperList.

The Hard Parts

• Context switching is real
• Metrics are noisier across projects
• Tooling matters — automation is essential

Bottom Line

If you are building multiple projects in public, one tweet per project per day forces focus. The key is treating each project as a separate conversation.