Emerging Launch Radar: GitHub Trending + Hacker News Momentum

Find software products gaining real traction right now by joining two independent public signals: build-side velocity (GitHub trending stars in period) and attention-side demand (Hacker News launch and front-page stories). The pipeline matches the same project across both, scores momentum 0 to 100, and tiers each one so you can act on it.

The core sources are token-free and antibot-free: GitHub trending HTML and the public Hacker News API. Product Hunt and domain WHOIS/MX enrichment are optional and off by default.

What it does

1. GitHub trending. Pulls trending repos for your timeframes and languages and reads stars-in-period (the velocity signal), total stars, and forks.
2. Hacker News. Pulls Show HN launches and front-page stories (and any keyword searches you pass) with points and comment counts.
3. Optional Product Hunt. When enabled with your own Product Hunt developer token, joins launches in as a third corroborating source.
4. Join. Matches projects across sources first on canonical GitHub owner/name, then on registrable domain, then on a normalized product-name token.
5. Optional domain enrichment. Runs domain-intelligence on each project domain to attach registrar, domain age, and whether the domain has mail (MX), so rows are outreach-ready.
6. Score and tier. Combines per-platform momentum into a 0 to 100 score. Appearing on more than one platform is what separates a breakout from a single-source mention.

Output

One row per project:

{
  "project": "some-ai-framework",
  "url": "https://github.com/acme/some-ai-framework",
  "momentumScore": 81,
  "tier": "breakout",
  "platforms": ["github", "hn"],
  "crossPlatform": true,
  "description": "Open source framework for ...",
  "github": {
    "repo": "acme/some-ai-framework",
    "url": "https://github.com/acme/some-ai-framework",
    "language": "Python",
    "starsInPeriod": 1240,
    "starsTotal": 8600,
    "forks": 410,
    "timeframe": "daily"
  },
  "hackerNews": {
    "topPoints": 312,
    "totalComments": 140,
    "threadCount": 1,
    "threads": [{ "title": "Show HN: ...", "permalink": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=...", "points": 312, "comments": 140 }]
  },
  "productHunt": null,
  "domain": "acme.com",
  "domainIntel": null,
  "scoredAt": "2026-06-05T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Tiers

• breakout — surfaces on two or more platforms with a combined momentum score of 65+. The strongest emerging-traction signal. First 3 breakout rows per run are free so you can validate output.
• momentum — score 40+ on a single platform, or any project on two or more platforms below the breakout bar.
• mention — cleared the noise gate on one platform but stayed below the momentum bar.

Projects below both the GitHub stars-in-period floor and the Hacker News points floor (with no Product Hunt votes) are dropped as noise and never charged.

Input

Field	Description
keywords	Optional. Narrows Hacker News (and Product Hunt) to these terms. Empty takes the whole trending list plus the HN feeds.
githubTimeframes	GitHub trending lists: daily, weekly, monthly. Default ["daily"].
githubLanguages	Optional language filters, e.g. ["python","rust"].
hnFeeds	HN feeds: show, top, best, new, ask, jobs. Default ["show","top"].
hnMaxAgeHours	Ignore HN stories older than this. Default 168 (one week).
minStarsInPeriod / minHnPoints	Noise gate floors.
maxItemsPerSource	Cap on rows pulled per source.
includeProductHunt + productHuntToken + productHuntTopics	Optional third source (your own token).
includeDomainEnrichment	Optional WHOIS + MX per project domain.

Pricing and nested cost

Priced per scored project: mention $0.06, momentum $0.12, breakout $0.18 (first 3 breakout rows per run free).

This pipeline calls other actors, and each child also bills you for its own usage on top of the per-project events above:

• github-trending-scraper — per repo row (first 5 free per run)
• hn-lead-monitor — per Hacker News item
• producthunt-launch-tracker — per launch (only when Product Hunt is on)
• domain-intelligence — per domain lookup (only when domain enrichment is on)

Keep maxItemsPerSource modest and the optional stages off to control total run cost.

Who it is for

• Developer tool and infrastructure sales teams sourcing companies the moment they get hot.
• Venture and angel scouts watching for cross-platform breakouts before they are obvious.
• Business development and partnerships teams tracking emerging projects in a category.