Last Sunday, I merged the first community PR. This Sunday, the community voted to merge every day.
The experiment: OpenChaos is a repo where anyone submits a PR, the community votes with GitHub reactions, and the most-voted PR gets merged. Everything can be changed — including the rules.
The Numbers
| Metric | Week 1 | Week 2 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 400 | 690 | +73% |
| Forks | 35 | 57 | +63% |
| Open PRs | 30 | 45 | +50% |
Monday: The Invisible Ballot
GitHub's API returns 30 results by default. We had 40+ open PRs.
Older PRs—including #13 (Rust rewrite) and #47 (IE6 mode)—weren't showing on the leaderboard. People couldn't vote on what they couldn't see.
I merged the fix immediately.
Some will say I broke my own rules. But a bug that hides PRs isn't chaos. It's just broken. You can't vote on whether to see the ballot. The voting booth has to work first.
The precedent: Content waits for Sunday. Infrastructure ships when it breaks.
Tuesday: The Rust Wars
Two PRs. Same meme. Very different execution.
PR #13: "Rewrite it in rust" by @wvanlit was Week 1's runner-up. 458 upvotes. One problem: it didn't build.
But sometime this week, it started passing CI. The meme became real.
The comments were split:
"less js => less bugs"
vs.
"Fewer people can read/write Rust. It's going to make it harder to contribute for no real gain."
vs.
"More screw ups = more chaos."
Then @bpottle pulled the branch to investigate. His assessment:
"I was astonished it has as many upvotes as it does. They're all because of the title. This is a branch that got halfway through a beer and remembered it had chores to do."
So he wrote PR #91: "Rewrite it in Rust (for real)". Thirteen commits. Axum backend. Proper async. Real architecture.
It got 18 upvotes.
Lesson: Democracy doesn't reward effort. It rewards memes.
Wednesday: The Quiet Coup
While everyone watched the Rust drama, PR #51: "Chaos each day" was climbing.
A simple change: merge daily instead of weekly.
By Wednesday, it passed the Rust rewrite. By Thursday, it led by 300+ votes. By Sunday morning, 788.
@matthewmayer called me the "benevolent dictator" and asked what time worked for me. I said 09:00 UTC — it gets me out of bed.
@BetonZM updated the PR to 9:00.
The community votes on what. The maintainer sets when. Governance is emerging.
One comment summed up the vibe:
"let there be chaos. after this - vibe code merge every hour."
Thursday: The Math
I ran the numbers. With #51 winning, here's what the next week looked like:
| Day | PR | What Ships |
|---|---|---|
| Sun 09:00 | #51 | Daily merges enabled |
| Mon 09:00 | #13 | Rust rewrite |
| Tue 09:00 | #47 | IE6 GeoCities mode |
| Wed 09:00 | #8 | PR health indicators |
| Thu 09:00 | #52 | Show age of PRs |
| Fri 09:00 | #60 | Hall of Chaos |
| Sat 09:00 | #11 | Inverted light/dark mode |
Seven merges in seven days instead of seven weeks. That was Thursday's math.
And by day nine? PR #63: "Add Automatic Merge" enters the queue. GitHub Actions. No human trigger.
The community didn't just vote for more chaos. They voted for exponential chaos.
Sunday: The Second Merge
January 18, 2026. 09:00 UTC.
PR #51: "Chaos each day" merged with +788 votes.
The next merge happens tomorrow at 09:00 UTC. The Rust rewrite is next — if it can resolve its merge conflicts. Otherwise, 1999 comes early.
Final Standings
| Rank | PR | Net Votes | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | #51 — Chaos each day | +788 | ✅ Merged |
| 2 | #13 — Rewrite in Rust | +458 | Merge conflicts |
| 3 | #47 — IE6 GeoCities mode | +319 | Queued |
| 4 | #8 — PR health indicators | +185 | Queued |
| 5 | #52 — Show age of PRs | +108 | Queued |
What's Next
By next Sunday, OpenChaos could be:
- Written in Rust
- Styled like 1999
- Running without me
I have no idea what it becomes. That's the whole point.
What's emerging
1. Velocity wins votes.
The daily merge PR wasn't clever or funny. It just promised more chaos, faster. That was enough.
2. The queue is the roadmap.
With daily merges, you can see the next week of changes lined up. The suspense shifts from what wins to what survives.
3. Governance emerges from chaos.
The first community merge added downvotes. The second changed the merge schedule. The community's first instinct isn't destruction—it's building the system that controls the chaos.
They're not breaking the game. They're writing the rules.
Week 2 of ∞.
The next merge is tomorrow.
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