As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#1

Post by kiraken » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

I built a lightweight React guided tour library after finding existing solutions too heavy or limiting for my use case. I open-sourced it six weeks ago, but haven’t seen much adoption or attraction yet.

I'm curious to hear from others who’ve released developer tools how it works and if I should be patient with it?

The reason I want this to work is not for monetary gain, it's open source and will always remain as such. I just thought it would be nice for my resume to have a widely adopted tool, and to validate my idea for it.

Would love feedback. This is the link: https://github.com/Aladinbensassi/react-guided-tour

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#2

Post by PaulHoule » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

Marketing is hard.

I skipped past the demo link at the top the first time I scanned through it, it could be more visible.

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#3

Post by kiraken » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Marketing is hard. I skipped past the demo link at the top the first time I scanned through it, it could be more visible.

I took your advice and added it to the About section, and added a small emoji in the Readme to boost visibility

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#4

Post by PaulHoule » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

kiraken wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Marketing is hard. I skipped past the demo link at the top the first time I scanned through it, it could be more visible.

I took your advice and added it to the About section, and added a small emoji in the Readme to boost visibility

The emoji is good but if I were you I'd put a sentence above it like "You can try it out here:"

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#5

Post by jayknight » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

Find an open-source project that has a react frontend and could use a tour, and create a PR for a nice tour using your library. Be transparent that you're the author of the library and you've done this work to showcase the capabilities of it.

I personally usually dislike that kind of tour and look for the skip button as soon as I can, so I'm not sure what sort of reception you'll see, so be prepared for it to be rejected. But then you can try again somewhere else (without getting spammy)

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#6

Post by kiraken » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

jayknight wrote: post #5

Find an open-source project that has a react frontend and could use a tour, and create a PR for a nice tour using your library. Be transparent that you're the author of the library and you've done this work to showcase the capabilities of it. I personally usually dislike that kind of tour and look for the skip button as soon as I can, so I'm not sure what sort of reception you'll see, so be prepared for it to be reje…

Sounds like a nice idea, which would allow me to showcase all the capabilities of the library!

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#7

Post by kiraken » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #4

kiraken wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took your advice and added it to the About section, and added a small emoji in the Readme to boost visibility

The emoji is good but if I were you I'd put a sentence above it like "You can try it out here:"

Done. Thanks a lot for the advice!

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#8

Post by thinkingemote » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

The readme shows signs of it being written by an LLM: the use of emojis and the lists mainly.

The readme might indicate the rest of the library might also be written by an LLM. I see there's a sprinkling of emojis in comments in the example code.

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#9

Post by apothegm » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

How are people supposed to have heard of it at all?

What’s their incentive to switching to an unknown OSS solution that may or may not be maintained in a year, from their current stable and maintained solution?

How can they be confident your code is safe and won’t intentionally or inadvertently open backdoors on their dev machine or introduce vulnerabilities to their app?

“If you build it, they will come” only works in the movies.

Re: As HN: Why is no one using my free library?

#10

Post by kiraken » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

apothegm wrote: post #9

How are people supposed to have heard of it at all? What’s their incentive to switching to an unknown OSS solution that may or may not be maintained in a year, from their current stable and maintained solution? How can they be confident your code is safe and won’t intentionally or inadvertently open backdoors on their dev machine or introduce vulnerabilities to their app? “If you build it, they will come” only works…

How would someone prove that it’s safe, good, and market it? Asking for your opinion here.