GitLab Star Gazer - Scrape GitLab Starrers and Extract Contact Info

GitLab Star Gazer is an Apify Actor that collects every user who starred a GitLab repository and enriches their profile with contact information: email addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles scraped from their personal websites.

Use it for developer lead generation, open-source community outreach, sales prospecting, and competitive intelligence on GitLab repositories.

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What It Does

1. Fetches all starrers of any public GitLab repository with full pagination support
2. Enriches each profile via the GitLab API - name, bio, location, organization, follower count, LinkedIn, Twitter
3. Scrapes the personal website listed on the GitLab profile to extract:
   • Email address (mailto links + regex fallback)
   • Phone number (tel links + regex fallback)
   • LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok profile URLs

The result is a ready-to-use contact list of developers who expressed interest in a specific technology or project.

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Key Features

Feature	Details
Full starrers pagination	Collects every star, no artificial cap
GitLab profile enrichment	Name, bio, organization, location, followers, LinkedIn, Twitter
Email extraction	From GitLab public email and personal website
Phone extraction	From personal website (tel links and regex)
Social media discovery	LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok
GitLab token support	Personal Access Token for higher rate limits and private repos
Max results limit	Set a cap for quick tests or cost control
Configurable enrichment	Toggle profile enrichment and website scraping independently

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Use Cases

• Sales prospecting: Build a contact list of developers who starred a competitor repo and reach out directly
• Developer outreach: Contact contributors or early adopters of an open-source project
• Community growth: Find active GitLab users in your niche who have public contact info
• Market research: Analyze who is watching a repository - organization, location, follower count
• Talent sourcing: Identify developers interested in a specific technology stack

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Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
owner	string	Yes	-	GitLab username, group or namespace (e.g. gitlab-org)
repo	string	Yes	-	Repository name (e.g. gitlab)
gitlab_token	string	No	-	Personal Access Token - increases rate limits and allows private repos
max_results	integer	No	0	Max starrers to collect. 0 = unlimited
enrich_profiles	boolean	No	true	Fetch full profile data for each user via GitLab API
scrape_websites	boolean	No	true	Visit each personal website to extract contact info and social links

Getting a GitLab Token

1. Go to gitlab.com/-/user_settings/personal_access_tokens
2. Click Add new token
3. Select the read_api scope (read-only access is sufficient)
4. Copy the token and paste it into the gitlab_token field

Without a token the actor uses unauthenticated requests, which are subject to GitLab's IP-based rate limits. For repositories with hundreds or thousands of stars, a GitLab token is strongly recommended.

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Output Data

Each record in the dataset represents one starrer. Example output:

{
  "repo_owner": "gitlab-org",
  "repo_name": "gitlab",
  "username": "johndoe",
  "gitlab_id": 1234567,
  "name": "John Doe",
  "company": "Acme Corp",
  "location": "San Francisco, CA",
  "bio": "Full-stack developer. Open source enthusiast.",
  "followers": 342,
  "following": 120,
  "profile_url": "https://gitlab.com/johndoe",
  "avatar_url": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/...",
  "website": "https://johndoe.dev",
  "email": "john@example.com",
  "email_from_website": "contact@johndoe.dev",
  "phone_from_website": "415-555-0123",
  "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/johndoe",
  "twitter": "https://twitter.com/johndoe",
  "instagram": "https://www.instagram.com/johndoe",
  "youtube": null,
  "reddit": null,
  "facebook": null,
  "tiktok": null,
  "starred_since": "2024-03-15T10:22:00Z"
}

Output Fields Reference

Field	Source	Description
username	GitLab API	GitLab login handle
gitlab_id	GitLab API	Unique numeric GitLab user ID
name	GitLab API	Display name
company	GitLab API	Organization field from GitLab profile
location	GitLab API	Location field from GitLab profile
bio	GitLab API	Profile bio text
followers / following	GitLab API	Follower and following counts
profile_url	GitLab API	Link to the GitLab profile
website	GitLab API	Personal website URL as listed on GitLab
email	GitLab API	Public email if set on the GitLab profile
linkedin	GitLab API / scrape	LinkedIn URL from GitLab profile or website
twitter	GitLab API / scrape	Twitter / X URL from GitLab profile or website
email_from_website	Website scrape	Email address found on personal website
phone_from_website	Website scrape	Phone number found on personal website
instagram	Website scrape	Instagram profile URL
youtube	Website scrape	YouTube channel URL
reddit	Website scrape	Reddit profile URL
facebook	Website scrape	Facebook profile URL
tiktok	Website scrape	TikTok profile URL
starred_since	GitLab API	ISO 8601 timestamp when the star was added

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How Website Scraping Works

When scrape_websites is enabled, the actor visits the URL in each user's GitLab website_url field and:

1. Parses the HTML with BeautifulSoup
2. Looks for mailto: anchor tags first, then falls back to regex scanning the full page text
3. Looks for tel: anchor tags first, then falls back to regex for phone numbers
4. Searches all anchor tags for known social media domain patterns (LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, TikTok)

Only the first match per field is returned. The scraping step is skipped if the user has no personal website listed. LinkedIn and Twitter found directly in the GitLab profile take priority over values scraped from the website.

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Rate Limits and Performance

Condition	GitLab API Rate Limit
No token (unauthenticated)	IP-based limits (varies by endpoint)
With Personal Access Token	Per-user limits (higher, varies by endpoint)

With enrich_profiles enabled, each starrer costs 1 API call. A repo with 1,000 stars requires approximately 1,010 requests total (10 paginated starrer pages + 1,000 profile lookups). A GitLab token is recommended for repos with many stars.

The actor automatically waits when a rate limit is hit (HTTP 429) and resumes when the reset window opens (up to 10 minutes). If the wait would exceed 10 minutes, the actor stops early and logs a warning with instructions to add a GitLab token.

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Tips

• Test with max_results set to 10 before running a full collection
• Set enrich_profiles: false and scrape_websites: false for a lightweight list of usernames only
• Export to CSV directly from the Apify Console for use in CRMs or email outreach tools
• Schedule the actor to run on a recurring basis to capture new starrers as they appear
• GitLab exposes LinkedIn and Twitter directly in user profiles — no website scraping needed for those fields

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