Day 5: New repo creation rate

The platform-buildout tell — SDKs, CLIs, demos shipping fast.

Yesterday

Yesterday's README check told you whether the team is positioning. Today's tells you whether they're building the platform around the position.

Why this signal matters

Most useful for Series A / Series B startups. When the core product works and the team has capital, they start building the platform around it — SDKs, CLIs, internal services, documentation sites, example apps. Each one is a new public repo.

The 5-minute exercise

1Open the org's main page.
2Click Repositories, sort by Newest.
3Count: how many repos created in the last 30 days? Last 90 days?
4Open the newest 3. What do they look like — SDKs, infra, demos?

What you’re filtering for

3+ new repos in 30 days, where the new repos look like platform components (CLI, SDK in a new language, example app, internal microservice) rather than throwaways or test repos.

Edge case

A single new repo named with a year or quarter ('foo-2026', 'platform-q3') — that's a roadmap commitment in code form, often more telling than three throwaway demos.

Bonus

This is the 'deploying capital' signal. A team that just raised a Series A is hiring engineers and the first thing those engineers ship is platform code. A team about to raise often pre-builds these so the next deck has a 'platform expansion' slide.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow: issue-to-PR ratio — the engagement vs shipping signal that separates firefighting from acceleration.

Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558