carsteneu/mystarhistory

mystarhistory is a self-hosted tool that generates star history charts for GitHub repositories. It exists because GitHub restricted its stargazers API in 2026 to only admins and collaborators, which broke the embedded star charts that many project READMEs relied on. Rather than depending on a third-party hosted service, this tool lets you generate the chart yourself, using your own access token, and commit it directly into your repository. The chart style is drawn to look hand-sketched, similar to xkcd comics, achieved through SVG filter effects. It uses a font called Handlee that is bundled with the tool so the chart looks the same no matter where it is viewed, without loading anything from an external source. You can choose a light or dark theme, or set up both so the chart automatically matches a viewer's GitHub theme preference. Running the tool is straightforward: clone the repository and run the Python script directly, no package installation required. You need Python 3.6 or newer and the official GitHub command line tool, signed in with an account that has admin or collaborator access to the repo you're charting. Command line options let you set the target repository, output location, colors, title, and chart size. For those who want the chart to stay current automatically, mystarhistory can also run as a GitHub Action. It commits the generated SVG files to a separate branch created just for this purpose, so it does not add noise to your main commit history or interfere with branch protection rules. Because of the same 2026 API restriction, the automated version needs a specially scoped access token stored as a secret, rather than the default token GitHub Actions provides. The output is a single small SVG file, typically around 15 kilobytes, that you reference from your README with one line of markdown. Once generated, it renders as a static image and does not depend on any ongoing connection to an outside service.