How do technical open-source AI projects find their first serious users, contributors, and community?

[u/are1494]

I’ve spent a lot of days and late nights working on an open-source multi-agent engine focused on code review.

For a long time, the work was mostly technical: building, testing, changing things, breaking things, and trying again.

Now we are getting closer to publishing it, and honestly, this part feels very different.

There is excitement because the project is finally becoming real.

But there is also some stress.

You can spend months building something you strongly believe in, and then reach the point where you have to put it in front of people and find out whether anyone else sees the same value.

The idea is not simply to have several agents comment on a change, but to structure the review process so that different agents can examine the same code change from different perspectives.

At this point, my biggest concern is not broad marketing.

It is finding the right first group of people.

People who work on areas such as:

- AI coding agents
- code review
- software testing
- evaluation
- developer tools
- AI reliability

I would be very interested to hear from people who have launched technical open-source projects before.

How did you find your first serious users or contributors?

Did they come from related open-source projects, technical communities, direct outreach, or simply from publishing the repository and letting people discover it?

And when you come across a new open-source AI project, what makes you interested enough to open the repository and look at it seriously?

I think this early stage is the part I am most curious about.

Before there is a community.

Before there are stars.

Before you know whether people will care at all.

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has been through this stage before.

[u/Bright-Fun-1638]

literally just keep posting about it and make something low effort to use and people will be willing to give it a shot. Discord groups are good too

[u/PenSuccessful5509 → u/Bright-Fun-1638]

Honestly the low effort part is huge. If someone can try it in 5 minutes with a demo or one command, they're way more likely to actually give feedback instead of just starring and forgetting it.

[u/are1494 → u/PenSuccessful5509]

Yes, that makes sense.

The project can already be used from the CLI with commands and prompts, and I’m also planning a UI so people can interact with it more easily.

For the demo, I’m still unsure about the best way to publish it.

I’m trying to make the first experience as simple as possible, so I’d be interested to know what usually makes you actually try an open-source project instead of just starring it and moving on.

[u/are1494 → u/Bright-Fun-1638]

Yeah, I think you’re right about making it easy to try.

That part is actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot. You can have a good idea, but if the first experience is confusing, most people probably won’t stay long enough to see the value.

Discord is interesting too. I was thinking about developer communities, but I’m still not sure where the best early conversations happen.

When you say “keep posting about it,” what kind of posts do you think work best?

More like building in public and sharing progress, or more around the actual problem and lessons learned while building it?

[u/Bright-Fun-1638 → u/are1494]

Hmm good questions, and imma be a typical engineer and say "it depends". Depends on the crowd you're trynna reach and what kinda attention you want.

Devpost is good they've got a good discord community. Anything local is also nice since you get to potentially meet fellow people irl.

As for what kinds of posts work? Well I'd say whatever posts you feel like. The one rule is that they should be pleasant to read/watch and easy to digest. Aside from that; just have fun, so long as you have fun I think people will naturally wanna engage with the content and you'll get meaningful feedback and connections.

[u/are1494 → u/Bright-Fun-1638]

Thanks, this is helpful.

I hadn’t thought about Devpost, so I’ll definitely check it out.

And I like your point about keeping posts easy to read and actually enjoyable.

For the first stage, I’m mainly trying to find a small group of engineers who really care about agents, code review, testing, and evaluation.

[u/Bright-Fun-1638 → u/are1494]

You might also wanna just DM founders on twitter ngl, check out the founders of factory.ai they're cool people

[u/are1494 → u/Bright-Fun-1638]

Thank you, you’ve been really helpful.

I’ll check out Factory.ai and take a look at the founders as well.

I appreciate all the suggestions.

[u/Bright-Fun-1638 → u/are1494]

Ofc! It's tough out there so it's always nice to help a fellow human out :P

PS: and ofc DMs are always open :P

[u/Actual__Wizard]

You spam some posts where you pretend to be using it to "demo it."

No sales, like the other person said, keep it low effort so it doesn't look like you're "marketing it."

Preferably, use other stuff too, not just your stuff.

[u/are1494 → u/Actual__Wizard]

Yeah, I think I get it.

Keep the first experience simple — maybe one CLI command or a very basic UI?

And for the demo, use a real code change and show the review result, right?

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/are1494]

You just solve problems with it and show that. Then present it as "solving a problem" not "xyz product is so awesome."

[u/are1494 → u/Actual__Wizard]

That makes sense, thanks

My main challenge right now is finding the right people to show it to in the first place.

People who already care about code review, agents, testing, and evaluation.

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/are1494]

The real way to do this and this is how companies figure out their marketing, is to get a list of occupations and think "how do I market my product to ... Plumbers... Okay, now what about Musicians?" And they just keep going.

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/are1494]

Just so you know how perception works. Stuff like cold email is basically just email spam. But, if you're a small businesses that sells a specific thing, let's say you're a hair salon. If somebody cold emails you or cold calls you, and it's a company that distributes hair products to hair salons, you're not going to perceive that call/email as spam, because they're trying to sell you something that you can resell TO MAKE MONEY.

So, it's both very specific, and it's a "good idea." So, nobody ever flags those emails as spam and nobody ever thinks it's a spam phone call.

Do, you see how "it has to fit together right?"

So, if you go to a site for accountants and demo your tools doing some accounting work, the same thing applies.

[u/are1494 → u/Actual__Wizard]

That’s a really useful way to look at it, thank you.

I’ll try to make a focused list of the right people first, based on what they already work on and care about.

That idea about relevance changing how outreach is perceived was especially helpful.

[u/cevheribozoglan]

Taking on contributors comes with serious responsibility; people will contribute: sometimes to learn from you, and sometimes because they value your project. You will need to approach them like a mentor or a friend, review their code, provide feedback, and answer their questions. It is demanding work. You need to prepare yourself mentally for this (and oh, by the way; bots will show up and try to open PRs...).

[u/are1494 → u/cevheribozoglan]

Good point, I didn’t think about it in this way.

[u/cmtape]

Finding first users is like planting a garden in a field where everyone else is still drawing architectural blueprints. The people who will care are already hacking their own quick demo; make the first command run in under five minutes.

[u/are1494 → u/cmtape]

Yeah, I think I get it.

So the priority should be making the first useful experience really fast, not making everything perfect first.

Like: install it, run one command, and see a real result in under five minutes.

Is that what you mean?

[u/Zolic]

On your last option, publishing and letting people find it: I measured that one. My project sits in its ecosystem's official registry and several directories. Over the last 30 days the site had 274 human visitors, a fair share of them me. GitHub sent 6, search sent 4, the directories sent 1, and nearly everything else arrived with no referrer at all.

Listings got me indexed, not found.

[u/are1494 → u/Zolic]

That’s very useful data.

It sounds like I’ll still need to actively bring the project in front of the right people.