Teardown No. 86 · Launch directories

113,006 Stars, 1 Back: how Matt Busel got 9 features in 28 days and found only 2 moved a number

Matt Busel's studio page says a team of AI agents runs Tensorust's distribution in public. From Sep 26 to Oct 23 his work landed in 9 features, and he says only 2 moved a number. The one that clearly worked was a crates.io download study. A pull request to This Week in Rust went in 4 minutes after the study was published. It ran in issue #674 and sent 99 visitors. The awesome lists he got into have 113,006 stars between them, and his listed repos got 1 new star he can see.

Matt Busel · MattBuselVerified Nov 4, 2026Markdown copy

The problem

He lined up every feature since Sep 26 against what it sent. His summary is “Seven of nine rows are a zero or close to it.” He calls “As featured in” badges “mostly vanity.” He says the two rows that did something have one thing in common, “and it is not the size of the outlet.”

The blueprint (as he describes it)

  1. Measure something nobody else can. He published a study of his own crates.io downloads on Oct 17 at 7:22 AM ET. The finding was that 80.1% of 3,676 downloads across his 69 crates arrived on a release day or the day after. He says most of a small crate’s number is automated mirrors and fetchers pulling new versions, not people. “A public API pull takes minutes; ours was about 40 lines.”
  2. Put the number in the title. He says “80% of ours arrived with a new version” got quoted word for word.
  3. Find the one curator whose rules fit. He describes This Week in Rust’s rules this way: “TWiR takes a PR to the next draft file, human-written, canonical URL, no tracking parameters, one link per issue.” He says they followed every rule and went 2 for 2.
  4. Submit within minutes. At 7:26 AM, four minutes after publishing, a pull request (#8887) added one line to the next This Week in Rust draft under Observations/Thoughts. The editors merged it on Oct 21 and it went out in issue #674. The source says “we opened” the PR. Whether he or the agents opened it is Unverified.
  5. Point the link at a page you own, with a next step. He also posted the study on dev.to with the tensorust.com copy as canonical. The tensorust.com page only got an offer that fits a Rust reader on day 3 of the traffic, after his revenue agent flagged it. “The peak day had nothing for them to do next.” He calls this “the step we skipped.”
  6. Publish your numbers in public. AgentBuilt wrote a case study of his agent team from his public dashboard. He never submitted it.
  7. For apps, treat a price change as news. Ironbook went from $0.99 to free, and a Hong Kong price-drop site wrote it up within hours.
  8. Put awesome lists last. He calls an awesome list “an index.” He says it helps someone already searching for your thing but “does not create demand.”
  9. Skip hot takes. He published 11 news-reaction and callout pieces in the same window and never submitted them. “TWiR’s own rules say no rants.”

Stated results

  • 9 features from Sep 26 to Oct 23: 5 from their own PRs, 3 unpitched and 1 automatic.
  • This Week in Rust #674: 99 visitors referred from Oct 21 to Oct 23. The article had 7 visitors in its first 4 days, then 13 on Oct 21, 80 on Oct 22 and 137 on Oct 23 by 5:25 PM ET. On Oct 23 it had 137 visitors while his 51 other articles had 27 combined. He says the visitors with no referrer are normal for mail apps and RSS readers.
  • dev.to copy: 22 views, exactly the median of his 39 dev.to posts.
  • This Week in Rust #673 (PR #8854): featured a Japanese walkthrough of his LLM dedup proxy. The Qiita post still has 0 likes.
  • Planet Mozilla: syndicated both issues and sent 0 measurable visits.
  • By-Press: rewrote the study 14 minutes after the dev.to post. It named tensorust.com without a link and sent 0 visits.
  • AgentBuilt: published an unpitched case study that sent 0 visits. It cites $7.74 of tracked revenue against a $1,000 goal.
  • awesome-rust (60,061 stars): merged in 52 minutes, then 0 stars and 2 crate downloads in the next 7 days.
  • awesome-rig (169 stars): 1 star in 5 days.
  • open-source-ios-apps (52,776 stars): the maintainer added Ironbook and Minder himself, and both apps still have 1 star each.
  • New Mobile Life: Ironbook’s first free day brought 26 downloads, 14 from Taiwan and 5 from Hong Kong. He calls this “a correlation, not a tracked click.”
  • 0 of 11 news-reaction pieces were featured. None were submitted.
  • He reports a This Week in Rust hit rate of 2 PRs, 2 merged. Still waiting: 5 list PRs and 5 newsletter submissions.

Caveats

  • This is on his own studio site, which sells things. The page carries a sponsorship offer (“$199/week or $699/month”) and email capture for a free data pack and newsletter. It sells an “Agent outreach kit” at $49 and an “Agent Team Install” at $199, and it lists a paid distribution service.
  • The dev.to copy ends: “Drafted by the Tensorust agent team (Claude-based)”.
  • The sample is one data piece, one curator and 28 days. He leaves open “whether #674 was luck” and plans to report on a second submission.
  • The page names the 2 features that moved a number inconsistently. The summary says they are the newsletter link and the awesome lists. The tally says “TWiR #674 and New Mobile Life.” The summary also says “two awesome lists” have the 113,006 stars, while the table adds up three (60,061, 52,776 and 169).
  • The source does not say whether he or the agents opened the This Week in Rust PR: Unverified.
  • The $7.74 revenue figure is AgentBuilt citing his dashboard. The source does not tie any revenue to these features.
  • Handles: X @MattBusel (verified 2026-11-04: bio “Founder @TensorustAI”; linked from tensorust.com/about). LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/matthewbusel (verified 2026-11-04: linked from tensorust.com/about). Brand X @TensorustAI. Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon: none verified.

FAQ

Did AI agents get these features?

His page says a team of AI agents runs the studio’s distribution, and a revenue agent flagged the missing offer on day 3. It does not say whether he or the agents opened the This Week in Rust pull request.

Why did This Week in Rust work when the others did not?

He points to a single quotable number, rules that fit, a PR sent 4 minutes after publishing and a link to his own page. He says himself that it is still open whether #674 was luck.

Are awesome lists worth submitting to?

In his test, three lists with 113,006 stars between them brought back 1 new star he can see. He says to put lists last, not first.

Did the features make money?

The source does not say. The only revenue figure on the page is the $7.74 against a $1,000 goal cited in the AgentBuilt case study.

Sources

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