workbuddy-manager: pools Tencent's free WorkBuddy credits into one API. 56 days, 2,400 stars, because it's still standing while everyone else pulled out

2026 Sep 23, a LINUX DO user named hsianglee left a comment under an open-source promo post: "Not bad. I've burned through over a billion tokens, and the credits keep piling up. Not sure if they'll ban accounts later." In Oct 19, under the same post, another user wrote: "I had 40 accounts, and when the server traffic expired, I paid the traffic fee and they all got banned." The four weeks between those two comments are how ithtelab/workbuddy-manager took off. Tencent handed out credits and free-tier models to promote its AI office assistant WorkBuddy. Someone pooled the quotas from dozens of accounts into a free API that works with Claude Code and Codex. Tencent started banning accounts, rival projects stopped one by one, and this one kept going, shipping several releases a day, so people who still wanted access moved here. It's worth studying because the same playbook will show up again with the next company that hands out credits. Copying this exact one, though, is already too late.

What it is

A web management panel with a Next.js frontend and FastAPI backend, wrapped around a reverse-proxy program written in Go (Sliverkiss/workbuddy2api). The proxy disguises Tencent WorkBuddy / CodeBuddy accounts as an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. The panel handles management: batch-adding accounts by QR code, automatic daily check-ins to collect credits, keep-alive, issuing keys to downstream users, setting a separate quota and IP / model whitelist per key, call logs, and estimating savings at DeepSeek's official prices.

Put simply, it's for people who want to share a pool of accounts with others. The upstream only has a command line, which is fine if you only use it yourself. To give keys to friends or a group chat, keep accounting, or apply rate limits, you need a layer like this. The author also built a Docker-free Windows GUI installer, one-click updates with signature verification, and an interface in five languages, so it's the easiest to install among its peers. The UI copies the design of cdk, an open-source project from LINUX DO itself. A commenter called it a "pixel-perfect copy", and the author replied: "I like CDK's web... I'm not taking your suggestion."

The demand was handed out by Tencent

WorkBuddy gives new international users 5,000 credits, plus daily check-in rewards of 100–150, along with tasks and mystery boxes. One account can collect 3,500+ a month (guides on Tencent Cloud's developer community and Zhihu). Starting in September the international version made DeepSeek V4.1 Flash free, and that extended all the way to Oct 31 (in the thread, 9-26 someone reported "renewed, now until Oct 9", and it was extended again later; PANews and @shao__meng on X mentioned it too). The free Hy3 tier was extended to Nov 15 (IT Home).

Each account gets a small quota, but dozens of accounts together make a free large-model API. The whole demand comes from there, and how good this panel is matters little. The first replies under the post were blunt: "Already using it", "Using the international version to get free df4.1", "Compatible with /v1/messages? Nice, nice."

Where the stars came from

One post got the circle going. The author, known on LINUX DO as ithte, posted "[Open-source promo] WorkBuddy Manager: a manageable web panel for workbuddy2api" in Sep 16. By 11-06 it had 5,974 views, 114 replies, and 172 likes. LINUX DO is the Chinese forum where people who "farm APIs and build reverse proxies" gather most, and the top of the README even says "This project is released and discussed in the LINUX DO community." After that, a batch of tutorials appeared on YouTube, CSDN, and Zhihu, such as "Practical ways to get DeepSeek 1017 for free: WorkBuddy reverse proxy + DSH integration" and "workbuddy reverse proxy achieves token freedom". What drove the traffic was the whole ecosystem. How many people went from a tutorial to this repo can't be separated out.

The upstream was deleted, so it packaged the upstream in. Around Sep 24, people in the thread started asking, "Did workbuddy2api get deleted?" "Did they run off?" "Anyone have a copy? DM me." In Oct 1 the author replied: "Already integrated, install with confidence, updates sync automatically." The panel doesn't change a single line of upstream code. It just ships the upstream source in the release package. Now that the upstream is gone, other panels have to take over the backend themselves, while this one just ships a new package.

Tencent banned accounts, rivals stopped updating, and it kept shipping releases. In Oct 19 posts, 11140 error codes started appearing ("11140 means you're banned, just switch accounts"). On Oct 21, @xluchuan posted on X: "The sky is falling, Workbuddy has started cracking down on reverse proxies… the related projects have all stopped maintenance," and @geekbb reshared it, reaching 11.9k views. The same day, linguo2625469/workbuddy2api-panel (4,730 stars), the largest in its category, announced it was ending maintenance. In Nov 6, another big one, ardeyouxipianyi/workbuddy2api-hub (3,631 stars), also stopped. This project went the other way and sped up releases: 18 releases in one day in Oct, 7, and 26–28 October had 7 releases in three days, plus ban detection, cooldown on account switching for large requests, guaranteed credits, and a separate exit proxy for each account.

The numbers line up: from GitHub's daily star counts, 10-16 was 1,295,10-21 and 1,638,10-28 added 96 stars in a single day (the biggest day of the whole run), and 11-06 was 2,438. linguo was cooling off over the same period. This one wasn't.

Behind these stars are people actually using it. 503 forks, and the release attachments across 130 versions have been downloaded 80,566 times (some of that is from the one-click updater pulling automatically, and the share isn't known). Issues and PRs have reached #407. In November, on 5 and 6, people were still reporting bugs about ban detection, credit stats, and accounts being lost after Docker updates. Among the outside contributors, one submitted twenty to thirty commits. No signs of inflated numbers were found.

Who it's competing with

Also, there are a dozen-plus GitHub repos named codebuddy2api, ranging from single digits to a few hundred stars. This isn't an empty niche. It's a whole "farm Tencent credits" ecosystem that showed up at once, with 8 and September, and it's one of the batches of people building dashboards on top of the upstream. One forum commenter put it this way: "It's a lot like when AI Coding first took off, when everyone had their own expense-tracking app."

It wins by lasting, not by being first. What drove the traffic was Tencent's credits plus a forum post, which several repos caught at the same time. It kept climbing after the late-October bans and stopped updates, because of "a standalone panel + upstream bundled in + several releases a day."

The risks are on the surface

This violates Tencent's terms of service. Tencent was already banning accounts in late October, and someone in the thread warned "better not burn your main Tencent account", and a reply said "take your main account offline first, the aunts' accounts can go". The free Hy3 tier expires in Nov 15, and the DeepSeek free period ended in Oct 31. Star growth is slowing: +7 in the last 312 days, versus +7 in the first 416 days. The hub's shutdown notice said, in its own words, "upstream may tighten further at any time". If Tencent fully blocks it one day, this ecosystem and its star curve will stop together.

The project itself is free, and from the outside you can't tell whether the author also sells access to a pool of accounts. What's visible is a sponsor banner for the residential proxy ProxyLane at the top of the README, and a 7 discount code WORKBUDDY30 (added in Oct 12). Multi-account anti-ban needs a clean IP for each account, so the proxy vendors are probably the ones really making money in this chain (inference).

If it were you

C. This project has no open niche left to chase. Tencent is banning accounts, the free tiers are running out, and there are a dozen-plus rivals with the top two already pulled out. Building another WorkBuddy panel now gets you the tail of an ecosystem that's about to close. What's worth learning is the playbook, saved for the next company that hands out credits.

Who it's for: devs who hang out on LINUX DO, V2EX-type forums, can ship a working tool within one or two weeks of a new platform's free quota going live, and are willing to keep updating code every day as the anti-abuse rules change. Stars are earned by being on call for maintenance at all hours.

Who it's not for: anyone who wants a long-lived, clean open-source project they can put on a resume. Projects like this live or die on when the platform acts. The author has only this one repo on GitHub and 16 followers, and 2,400 stars haven't bought much personal reputation. The nature of the project also makes it a bad fit for job materials.

How to do it: don't copy WorkBuddy specifically. Watch for the next big company that hands out credits or free-tier models for AI coding and office products (in the thread, 10-13 and 10-14 are already asking for a "Trae-manager," and someone is already building a multi-platform workbuddy2api-trae-qoder-minimax-panel). Take three lessons from it: don't modify the upstream, just build a panel on top, so if upstream breaks you swap the package; build for distributing access to others, with keys, quotas, allowlists, and logs; and lower the install barrier as far as possible, with a Windows installer and one-click updates.

How to get users: post an "open-source promo" thread on LINUX DO on day one, tag it as the community asks, and screenshot-disclose which parts were AI-generated. Personally answer every deployment question in the replies. In this thread the author and contributor Htibinak replied dozens of times. Tutorial writers will find you on their own.

Deadline: there's no fixed date; it depends on the platform. For a new platform, the stretch from handing out credits to cracking down on reverse proxies has been about five to six weeks this time (mid-September to October 21). To catch the traffic surge, you need to ship within one or two weeks of the free quota being announced.

Could be wrong: (1) If Tencent keeps the free quota going after the Nov 15 Hy3 freebie ends and doesn't tighten bans, and this project's stars climb back to 50+ a day, the ecosystem is more durable than it looks, and the grade should go up. (2) Conversely, if weekly star growth drops to a few dozen within a month and issues fill up with "all banned" reports, even the survivors' edge is gone. (3) When the next big company hands out credits, if the first batch of 2 API panels fail to reach 1,000 stars within two or three weeks, this playbook only worked this one time.

Data and sources

• GitHub: the README for ithtelab/workbuddy-manager, release history (130 versions, total download count on attachments), commits and issues; daily star/fork changes (10-16 to 11-06); star counts and shutdown notices for similar repos (11-06).
• LINUX DO: the post "[Open Source Promo] WorkBuddy Manager — a web panel to manage your workbuddy2api" (posted at linux.do/t/topic/2911148,9-16, 11-06 reads), and the replies quoted in the article all come from this thread.
• Credits and free quota: Tencent Cloud Developer Community, Zhihu guides; PANews, X @shao__meng (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash free for a limited time); IT Home (Hy3 free period extended to 11-15).
• Bans: X @xluchuan (10-21), reposted by @geekbb (11.9k views).
• Sponsorship: the README banner and 10-12 commit history.