GitHub Treasure Hunt

GitHub Treasure Hunt is a calm, static discovery engine for open-source gems. Search by keyword, browse a topic, narrow the field to hidden gems, or roll the dice for a serendipitous repository from GitHub's public search API.

Open GitHub Treasure Hunt

What you can do

• Search for an idea. Start with a keyword such as climate, accessibility, or terminal.
• Explore by topic. Jump into AI, design, security, education, developer tools, and more with one tap.
• Find hidden gems. Filter repositories by star count to look beyond the obvious choices.
• Make the most of 30 minutes. Apply a focused recipe for smaller, active, approachable projects.
• Leave it to chance. Choose Surprise Me for one hand-picked random repository at a time.
• Pass a good find along. Share a repository directly from its card; on supported devices this opens the native share sheet, otherwise it copies the repository link.
• Send it to your sky. Every repo card has a Send to sky ✦ button that opens Lodestar with the repository pre-loaded as a star (tagged origin: "treasure-hunt"), so a find you want to keep lands in your personal night sky.

The trilogy handoff

Treasure Hunt is one of three connected tools. It is a stateless discovery engine; Lodestar is the memory layer. Send to sky encodes the repo into a small payload in the Lodestar URL hash (…/lodestar/#/add?s=<encoded>) — no backend, no shared storage, the URL is the whole wire. The shared payload + encoding contract lives in src/lib/starLink.js, copied verbatim from Lodestar and covered by a round-trip test so the sender and receiver never drift.

Quick start

git clone <repository-url> github-treasure-hunt && cd github-treasure-hunt
npm install
npm run dev

Node.js 20.19 or newer is recommended.

How it works

• Every search, category, star band, and surprise roll uses one canonical GitHub repository query.
• Query responses are cached for the session, so one Surprise Me request can provide roughly 30 discoveries.
• Filter changes are debounced to protect the unauthenticated GitHub API quota.
• An optional fine-grained, public read-only PAT can be stored in the visitor's own browser to raise their personal search limit. It is never sent anywhere except directly to GitHub.

This project is deliberately simple: no AI agents, no social network, no crypto, no accounts, and no analytics. You arrive, discover something cool, and leave.

Interface principles

The app keeps the hunt focused: one centered discovery panel, a single accent colour, responsive controls, and clean repository cards. Everything works with a keyboard, including visible focus states for search, filters, settings, and repository links.

Commands

npm test
npm run lint
npm run build

Deployment

The repository includes a GitHub Pages workflow for main. After pushing the repository, enable Pages in repository settings and choose GitHub Actions as the source. Vite is configured for the /github-treasure-hunt/ base path.

Contributing

Small, focused contributions are welcome. Before opening a pull request:

1. Keep the app static and client-side.
2. Never commit a token, key, credential, or user data.
3. Avoid new dependencies unless the project scope explicitly requires one.
4. Run npm test, npm run lint, and npm run build.

Look for issues labeled good first issue or help wanted if you would like a starting point. See CONTRIBUTING.md for a quick first- contribution walkthrough.

License

MIT