X Communities is shutting down May 30. Here's what I built for builders who need a permanent home.
X Communities shuts down May 30.
If you've been using the #buildinpublic community there to document your indie dev journey — that timeline is gone. The posts, the context, the progress log you've been building for months.
I've been in the same boat. I build things in public and I want a record of it that doesn't disappear when a platform decides to restructure, pivot, or shut down.
So I built Openstage (https://openstage.dev).
What it is
A public profile page for builders. Your URL is openstage.dev/yourusername.
Connect GitHub and your commits start flowing into your timeline automatically. Add milestones, shipped features, links, notes manually. It becomes a living record of what you built and when — without you having to remember to post about it.
Here's mine: https://tuxnotfound.openstage.dev
Why it's different
Most build-in-public tools are either:
- Social feeds (Twitter, IH) — ephemeral, algorithm-dependent, rented space
- Changelogs (GitHub releases) — dev-facing, not built for public storytelling
- Personal blogs — great but manual and slow
Openstage sits in the gap: a public-facing builder profile that maintains itself from your GitHub activity, permanent, and fully yours.
What's in it
- Profile at openstage.dev/yourusername
- GitHub OAuth sync — commits auto-appear on your timeline
- Manual entries: milestones, shipped features, links, notes, releases
- Streaks — consecutive days with any activity
- Analytics (Pro) — views, countries, referrers, entry clicks
- OG card, embed widget, GitHub README badge
Free forever for the core profile. Pro tier is $7/month or $49 lifetime.
If you're losing your X Communities home
Come claim your profile before May 30. Takes 2 minutes with GitHub OAuth. Your timeline starts building itself from your commits immediately.
Drop your openstage link in the comments — I'll follow along.
it's official — x communities shut down today. if you're one of the builders who used it, openstage.dev is still here. free to claim your profile, github commits auto-sync, your timeline stays yours regardless of what platforms do. openstage.dev/tuxnotfound is mine if you want to see what it looks like.
This is a smart timing wedge. X shutting down Communities gives people a real reason to move now, and the GitHub auto-timeline angle makes it more useful than “another builder profile.” The strongest positioning is probably not just permanent home, but proof of work that builds itself.
That said, I’d be careful with the name Openstage. It explains the public/showcase angle, but it also feels broad and a little generic. If this becomes the trusted identity layer for builders, launches, commits, milestones, and public proof, the name needs to feel more premium and ownable before profiles and URLs start locking in.
Auryxa .com would fit that direction better: polished, memorable, and more like a serious builder identity brand than a temporary community replacement. If Openstage is just the launch wrapper, fine. But if this becomes the permanent professional layer for builders, I’d pressure-test the name now before May 30 traffic bakes it in.
you're right that the window is now, and i've thought about it. openstage does what it says — it's a public stage for your build. that directness is intentional. if someone lands on openstage.dev they get the idea without needing to decode a brand.
auryxa is polished but it's also a blank slate. you'd be spending half your energy explaining what it is before you can talk about what it does. that tradeoff feels backwards for a tool that lives or dies on people actually understanding the value immediately.
if the name feels generic over time, that's a fixable problem. if no one knows what the product does, that's harder. keeping an eye on how early users describe it — if "openstage" keeps sliding off people's tongues wrong, i'll take that seriously. but so far the feedback has been the opposite: people get it fast.
appreciate the push though. the name pressure-test point is legit regardless of where you land on the specific alternative.
That’s a fair read, and I agree the early wedge needs instant comprehension.
Openstage does that well because the first association is obvious: public stage, public build, public proof.
The only distinction I’d keep watching is whether users describe it as a “place to post what I’m building” or as the actual proof-of-work identity layer they want to keep long term.
If it stays closer to the first, Openstage is probably doing the job.
If it moves toward the second, the naming question becomes less about explanation and more about whether the brand feels ownable enough to carry profiles, launches, commits, milestones, and reputation over time.
So I wouldn’t force a rename now. I’d just treat the next few weeks as the real test: if users repeat Openstage naturally and it starts feeling like a permanent identity layer, you’re right to keep it. If they understand it but don’t remember it, that’s the signal to revisit the name before URLs and profiles get too baked in.
This is actually a really clean idea — especially the GitHub → narrative bridge.
Most “build in public” tools fail because they depend on human consistency, not system-driven signals. Using commits + milestones as the backbone solves that in a practical way.
The positioning is also interesting: not a social feed, not a changelog — more like an “engineering timeline of record.” That gap has always existed.
Curious how you’re thinking about:
filtering noisy commit activity vs meaningful milestones
handling multi-repo builders (monorepos / microservices)
and whether the timeline becomes more “story-driven” or strictly activity-driven over time
Also, if you ever need help on the infra / scaling / architecture side of this kind of product, I’d be open to contributing or collaborating on paid work where relevant.
Really like the direction — feels like one of those “obvious in hindsight” products.
"engineering timeline of record" that's the framing i was missing. stealing that
that is exactly the problem i kept running into. i'd start strong with daily posts, then miss a day, then feel behind, then stop entirely. the whole thing collapses because it's willpower-dependent.
the commit-as-signal idea came from realizing that i was already "building in public" on github — i just wasn't surfacing it anywhere human-readable. openstage is mostly just a better lens on what's already happening.
the commit filtering question is one i'm still working through — right now it surfaces everything and lets you manually hide entries, but smarter filtering (meaningful vs noise) is on the list. multi-repo is handled since it's syncing at the github user level, not repo level, so all your commits come in. story vs activity is the real open question — leaning story, but not forcing it.
This comment was deleted 14 days ago.