"The boss says let's get bubble tea together, doesn't say who pays": a guide to social etiquette rides the sequel slot of "The High-Value Life Guide", 1,900 stars in 35 days
What it is A Chinese-language guide to social etiquette for college students and new hires. 10 chapters, 77 entries. Each entry spells out what to do, what to say, what it costs, and when it stops working. It comes with a searchable web page, a PDF and an AI Skill, and is free to read on GitHub.
Why it caught on After "The High-Value Life Guide" blew up, people went looking for the next one. This guide went up early, its topic touches everyone, its tone is restrained, and it had a ready-made PDF. Chinese resource accounts on Weibo and GitHub-recommendation accounts on X both shared it as the "sequel".
CHow you could follow it Don't copy the same topic, and don't squeeze into a narrower one. Copy its format instead (fixed fields, stated costs and exceptions, a search page, a PDF, a Skill). Pick a big topic that everyone is anxious about and that nobody has written up in this template yet. Prepare the PDF and the "following XX" copy, then go find resource accounts and GitHub-recommendation accounts.
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-02 · 1,933 stars · 7 days +205
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-09 → 2026-11-08 (31 days, 31 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
An author who registered half a year earlier with only 35 followers took the template of "The High-Value Life Guide" (74k stars), swapped the topic to social etiquette, and put it on GitHub in Oct 2. The original's heat had not yet faded. Weibo resource accounts and X accounts that only repost GitHub projects promoted it as "another masterpiece following The High-Value Life Guide", and it gained more than a thousand stars in three days. The move is worth learning, but this wave already has a dozen-odd "XX Guide" copycats, most at a few hundred stars, and the "sequel" slot is closing.
Chapter 4, entry 3
Entry 3 of chapter 4 in kkk-bot/HowToGetAlong is titled "Before covering someone's money, confirm the cost and how it will be settled." It addresses this situation: the boss says "let's get drinks, bubble tea or coffee together" and doesn't say who pays. The suggested wording is:
"Sure, I'll take this cup. And who do I pass mine to?"
Below that is a row called "What it costs": coordination and reconciliation time, plus capital tied up while you front the money. Below that is "Exceptions and trade-offs": rank doesn't decide who has to pay.
All 77 of them are written this way. On the afternoon of Oct 20 2026, several accounts on Sina Weibo posted it one after another: one 15:44 post "the course your school never taught…" (IP Zhejiang), and one 16:55 post "the interpersonal details college never taught you…" (IP Beijing). The same page had a resource account's cloud-drive post, "recently viral: *A Guide to Human Relations*," with extraction code 1234, sitting alongside Fan Deng reading-club resources. The next day, around noon Beijing time 12:45, Geek Lite (@QingQ77) and @Smartpigai on X recommended it, a minute apart. The repo still had 249 stars at 10-19 and 10-20 rose 191,10-21, then rose 558,10-22 more and 303 (daily stars on GitHub).
What it is: a handbook co-written with AI, for people just entering the workforce
For college students and fresh grads: 10 chapters, 77 entries, covering campus collaboration, asking for help, internships and workplace, borrowing money from friends, toasts at dinners, family, and job offers. Each entry has 12 fixed fields: the situation, the key judgment, what to prep before acting, what to do first, what to say, how to handle different scenarios, what it costs, what it might get you back, when to switch approaches, exceptions and trade-offs, sources, and related entries. Blogger iTech 10-24 checked every cell: 77×12=924 cells, none missing.
The delivery format matches the prototype: a GitHub Pages search site (you can search phrases like "borrowed money never repaid" and it works offline), a continuous reading page, a 104-page PDF, a Markdown file, and an AI Skill so Claude and Codex can answer based on the book. The README's first screen reads "10 chapters · 77 entries · all empirical advice."
The repo has an AGENTS.md, and the commit messages are imperative English sentences of the kind AI coding tools produce, with 60 commits over two weeks. It's safe to infer that the author wrote it together with an AI (inference). The author is called YOLO, and the GitHub account kkk-bot was registered in March this year.
Where the stars came from: people waiting for a "sequel"
| Timeline | What happened | star |
|---|---|---|
| 9-07 | The prototype, "The High Value-for-Money Life Guide" (eternity4719/HowToLiveBetter), launched, and in a single day 10-10 rose by 2,451 | — |
| 10-02 | Repo created | 0 |
| 10-04~10-15 | WeChat tipping QR code, Xiaohongshu and Douyin QR codes added, a paid version announced; 10-15 a recommendation post appeared on CSDN | 10-17 at 225 |
| 10-20 | Multiple Weibo accounts reposted it the same day, and cloud-drive resource posts circulated along with it; X user @ilovek8s posted "After The High Value-for-Money Life Guide, now there's The Guide to Social Dynamics" | +191 |
| 10-21 | Geek Lite and Smartpig posted one minute apart, and Smartpig kept promoting the prototype in the same thread; someone posted a video on Bilibili | +558 (peak) |
| 10-22~10-25 | On X it kept being reshared, with one post at 6,204 views; two Cnblogs breakdowns, one stating it "openly acknowledges drawing on" the prototype; a Bilibili video "1486 stars of social dynamics guide, recommended for word-by-word study," about 2,300 plays | By 1,518 |
| 10-26 | A Douban book list, "Blown away by these two open-source docs," put it alongside the prototype | — |
| 10-27~11-04 | Organic growth of 10–60 per day | By 1,771 |
| 11-05 | The WeChat Official Account "逛逛GitHub" ran a roundup, "These 7 GitHub projects will have your life sorted out," and it ranked 6 | 11-06 +95 |
11-06 is at 1,879 stars and 130 forks. It gained 172 in the last 7 days, and 270 in the 7 days before that. It's cooling.
Nearly every promo post opens with the same line: "Following The High-Value Life Guide, another masterpiece." The prototype blew up in September and was still at the top in October. It created a category in readers' minds: "the free life manual on GitHub." These readers now go looking for the next one. HowToGetAlong 10-02 launched early among the copycats.
The rest of the spread came from two kinds of accounts. One is the resource accounts on Weibo and cloud drives, which want a PDF they can pass around, and this one had a ready 104-page version. The other is Chinese accounts on X that recommend GitHub projects daily, the standard amplifier in the Chinese open-source community. It wasn't picked up by Hacker News and got no media coverage. The X posts with visible view counts ranged from a little over a hundred to over six thousand, so it spread within a small circle. No sign of paid acquisition.
Why this one and not the other copies
The topic has broad appeal. Borrowing money, being handed extra work, dinner toasts, who pays for milk tea when the boss orders it: every young person has run into these. The copies in the same wave covered studying abroad, scam prevention, unemployment, fitness, and relocation, with much narrower audiences. People who share it don't need technical knowledge.
The tone is restrained, so bigger accounts dare to repost it. On Douyin, content like "800 tricks" teaches cynical manipulation and guessing motives. This does the opposite: each entry clearly states "what it costs" and "when it doesn't work," and the basis row honestly says "empirical advice." The Cnblogs breakdown specifically praised "putting the cost into every entry." Parents and college students are willing to share this kind of thing.
The format fits the idea of a "sequel." The 12-field skeleton, search site, PDF, and Skill all follow the prototype, with only the prototype's A/B/C evidence grading removed. The prototype cites papers and official documents for every entry; this one doesn't, which makes it much easier to write.
Format alone isn't enough. The same author used the same template for "HowToLiveWithAI" (an AI learning guide, built 10-14) and it only got 34 stars. Topic and timing decide the outcome.
Who it's competing with, and who it's riding on
| Project | Launched | star | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|
| eternity4719/HowToLiveBetter | 9-07 | About 74k | The prototype: 772 entries, varied topics, with evidence grades on each entry |
| cdyforever/how-to-live-better | 9-18 | About 14k | A single-page reading version of the prototype |
| BryceYuuu/RUN | October | About 3,900 | Same wave of copies, covering relocation |
| BeckyGlobal/PaidToStudyAbroad | October | About 1,400 | Same wave, covering studying abroad |
| AIPMAndy/how-to-survive-unemployment | October | About 530 | Same wave, covering unemployment |
| QERSSD/HowToAvoidScams | October | About 120 | Same wave, covering scam prevention |
| changxueyi/renqing-shigu | 10-23 | 54 | Same name, same topic, 31 chapters and 640 entries, more content, launched three weeks later |
| SocialAI-tianji/Tianji (天机) | 2023-12 | About 2,000 | "A large model that understands social dynamics," a tutorial and dataset for developers, not a reading book |
(GitHub, 11-06 before/after)
The line to watch is changxueyi: same topic, eight times the entries, three weeks later, 54 stars. A second entry on the same topic has almost no chance. In this whole "XX Guide" wave, only the ones with broad topic coverage reached over a thousand stars.
Also, someone already copied its README directly to make a "Claude UI theme, clean version" (xiaobai5211314/HowToGetAlong, 10-19,93 stars), deepskill.market has a "social dynamics AI advisor" Skill, and "full original PDF" versions are all over the reupload sites.
What the author gets in exchange for the stars
For most people on GitHub, the stars are the goal. This author is different: he treats the repo as an entry point. The README and page 2 of the PDF carry Xiaohongshu and Douyin QR codes, there's a WeChat tipping code, and he separately maintains a paid enhanced PDF. A Douban Reading e-book edition published by Dukou Culture is already out at ¥49.90, about 150k characters and 102 scenarios. 10-20 changed the license to "personal non-commercial study," and 10-25 specifies a base licensing fee of ¥59.9 for adaptation, commentary, or derivative works. Issues already contain 5 licensing requests, and Douyin has a compilation labeled "officially licensed for commercial use by the author." The prototype published an e-book through Guomai Culture, and it's following that path too. How much it has sold is unknown.
If it were you
The verdict in one line: This playbook is worth learning, but this topic and this wave shouldn't be chased. Social dynamics is already taken; later entrants on the same topic get only 54 stars. More and more people are using "after The High Value-for-Money Life Guide," the prototype itself is cooling, and the sequel slot is nearly full.
Who it's for: People who have a broad-appeal topic nobody has built with this template yet, who are willing to use AI to write dozens of structured entries in two weeks, and who want GitHub to serve as the entry point for their Xiaohongshu and Douyin accounts.
Who it's not for: People who want to make "Social Dynamics Guide 2" or "a more complete Social Dynamics Guide"; people who want to ride this wave to squeeze in another narrow topic (a particular profession or city); people with no off-platform channels who are counting only on organic GitHub traffic.
How to do it: Copy the format, not the topic. Fixed fields (the most valuable are the "cost" and "exceptions" rows), a searchable site, a downloadable PDF, plus an AI Skill. Keep the tone restrained, don't teach manipulation, don't promise results. Pick a topic everyone is anxious about that no one has systematically written up, such as renting and deposits, first medical visits and insurance, or handling paperwork for parents (these are inferences; search GitHub before publishing to see whether someone has already done it).
How to get users: Have the PDF ready first, since resource accounts are looking for exactly that. On launch day, DM a few Chinese accounts on X that recommend GitHub projects daily, with a ready-written line for them, "after XX." Put your own social handles in the README and on page 2 of the PDF. Once stars reach about a thousand, go after roundup accounts like "逛逛GitHub."
When to do it, before the window closes: The next one or two months while the prototype's heat is still up (inference). If the prototype is only gaining dozens of stars a day after November, the "sequel" angle stops working, and you have to rely on the topic alone.
Signs you've misread the situation: If after November new "XX Guide" projects that don't name the prototype reach several thousand stars in two weeks on the strength of their topic alone, the category has established itself and no longer depends on the prototype's heat, and there's more room to follow than this analysis suggests. Conversely, if the copies that already took off, such as RUN and PaidToStudyAbroad, are each gaining only single digits per day afterward, this wave is over.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one eternity4719/HowToLiveBetter The High Value-for-Money Life Guide Open source 2026-09-07 74k stars, single-day peak +2,451; Guomai Culture published an e-book Its prototype: 772 entries, a sprawling range of topics, with A/B/C evidence grades. HowToGetAlong copied the skeleton, switched the topic to interpersonal relations, and dropped the evidence grades changxueyi/renqing-shigu Open source 2026-10-23 54 star Same name, same topic, 640 entries, but launched three weeks late and missed the heat SocialAI-tianji/Tianji 天机 Open source 2023-12 2,032 star A tutorial and dataset for building a large model that understands social dynamics, aimed at developers, not a book for students The same wave of XX Guide copies (PaidToStudyAbroad, HowToAvoidScams, how-to-survive-unemployment, RUN, etc.) Open source 2026-10 122–3.9k star Same template, but the topics are studying abroad, scam prevention, unemployment, and relocation, with narrower audiences than social dynamics IvyYang1999/renqing-shigu-skill, t963891881-cell/zhongguoren Open source 2026-04 / 2026-09 31 / 51 star Only a Skill or prompts, or a backroom-tactics, cynical route; no readable book and no searchable site AkashRajpurohit/howtoprofessionallysay Open source 2022 1,280 star English workplace phrasing, not Chinese social context AI reply-generation apps such as Lianzhidao and High-EQ Keyboard iOS 2022–2025 cn store rating 40k / 7,852 Tools that generate romantic chat replies with AI, giving one sentence per request, without explaining judgment or costs "Everyday Social Savvy" and traditional books, plus Douyin accounts about social etiquette Other Years Very large Cynical hustle-culture takes and feel-good platitudes; its tone is restrained, covers costs and exceptions, and it's free and open source. - Where users come from
- Verified Riding the name of 《高性价比人生指南》: X @ilovek8s 10-20, Sina 10-20 and 11-02, Douban lists, and the Smartpig post thread all open with "another masterpiece after 《高性价比人生指南》"; a cnblogs post says it "openly acknowledges HowToLiveBetter as its reference".
- Verified Weibo resource accounts and cloud drives: multiple posts from 10-20 15:44 (Zhejiang) and 16:55 (Beijing); the same page carries cloud-drive extraction codes and a resource post calling it "the recently viral 《人情世故指南》". +191 that day.
- Verified X accounts that share GitHub repos: Geek Lite and Smartpig posted within a minute of each other around 10-21 04:45/04:46 UTC, +558 that day; later @weiwei2018831 and @fhwofjow51260 (6,204 views).
- Verified Blogs, aggregators and Bilibili reposts: two cnblogs iTech posts (10-24), 51CTO, 中创网, baoshare, codekk, trendshift; Bilibili BV1j4HK6vEvs (10-24, about 2,333 plays).
- Verified WeChat Official Account roundup: 逛逛GitHub included it in "These 11-05 GitHub projects will have your life perfectly planned" (7 in the title), +11-06 95.
- Inferred the author's own Xiaohongshu and Douyin accounts: the README and PDF cover, plus page 2 with the Xiaohongshu 4287159956 and Douyin 793147359 QR codes; 11-02 the Sina "by yolo" post may also be the author's own; follower counts not found
Why kkk-bot/HowToGetAlong (《人情世故指南》) took off
Channel: GitHub · Research date 2026-11-06 · Data card: 35 days 1,879 stars (GitHub API real-time as of that day 1,915), 130 forks, single-day peak +558 (10-21)
Bottom line
It is a copy of the 《高性价比人生指南》 playbook (eternity4719/HowToLiveBetter, 74k stars) applied to the topic of 人情世故 (social savvy). The structure, delivery format, even the "find a publisher for an e-book" step are all copied. Stars rose while HowToLiveBetter's buzz was still hot, and Weibo resource accounts and X accounts that specialize in sharing GitHub projects promoted it with the line "another masterpiece after 《高性价比人生指南》". The author treats GitHub as a traffic funnel: the README carries Xiaohongshu and Douyin QR codes, there is a tip code and a paid PDF, adaptation licensing costs ¥59.9, and a deal with 读客文化 put an e-book on Douban Reading for ¥49.9.
1. What it is
- A Chinese manual of interpersonal relationships for university students and recent graduates: 10 chapters, 77 entries (free version v1.23.0). Each entry has 12 fixed fields: the situation, the key to judge, preparation before acting, what to do first, what you can say, how to handle different scenarios, what it costs, what you might get back, when to switch approaches, exceptions and costs, sources, and related entries. (From the README; a cnblogs iTech breakdown post 2026-10-24 checked entry by entry: 77×12=924 cells, none missing.)
- Delivery formats: a GitHub Pages search site (search by entry number or phrases like "borrowing money without repaying", works offline, can be bookmarked and shared), a continuous reading page, a 104-page PDF, Markdown, plus an AI Skill (social-situations-guide) that lets Claude/Codex answer according to the book.
- Clearly written with AI collaboration: the repo has an AGENTS.md, commit messages are English imperatives in the style of Codex/Claude, and 60+ commits in two weeks.
- The author "YOLO" (GitHub kkk-bot, account registered 2026-03, 35 followers) has only 4 repos; another repo with the same template, HowToLiveWithAI (an AI learning guide, created 10-14), got only 34 stars.
II. Growth curve and timeline
| Date | star | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 10-02 | 0 | Repo created |
| 10-03~10-15 | — | Dense iteration; 10-04 tip code added; 10-11~10-12 Xiaohongshu and Douyin QR codes added, paid version teased; 10-15 v1.23.0, PDF cover with a prominent author and Douyin handle credit. |
| 10-15 | — | A CSDN recommendation post "From campus to society: 《人情世故指南》" appears. |
| 10-17 | 225 | First observation in our repo_day database. |
| 10-19 | 249 | Someone applied to turn it into Douyin AI short videos (issue #1). |
| 10-20 | 440(+191) | Multiple Sina Weibo accounts posted the same day: 15:44 "The course school never taught…" (Zhejiang), 16:55 "Interpersonal details college never taught…" (Beijing). The same page had resource accounts' cloud-drive links ("extraction code 1234", "recently viral 《人情世故指南》", bundled with 樊登读书 resources). X @ilovek8s posted at 06:53 UTC: "After 《人生高性价比指南》, here comes 《人情世故指南》 too". The author added "non-commercial license + licensing requests go through Issues" that day. |
| 10-21 | 998 (+558, peak) | X @QingQ77(Geek Lite)04:45 and @Smartpigai 04:46 posted within a minute of each other (UTC). Smartpig then kept the thread going with HowToLiveBetter; "可可在B站" posted a video on Bilibili; aggregator sites like baoshare, yunzhuanmi, and 心得吧 followed up. |
| 10-22 | 1,301 | X @weiwei2018831 (image labeled Made with AI). |
| 10-24~10-25 | 1,474→1,518 | Two cnblogs iTech breakdown posts (stating it "openly acknowledges HowToLiveBetter as its reference"); cnblogs 「汤姆百宝箱」; Bilibili 「1486 stars 的人情世故指南, recommended for word-by-word study」 (10-24, about 2,333 plays); X @fhwofjow51260 6,204 views; 中创网 and other repost sites. |
| 10-26 | — | Douban group "Social Survival Skills Nobody Taught You — Sharing the 'Guide to Social Rules' PDF" (now 404); Douban list "Blown Away by These Two Open-Source Docs" (paired with "A Guide to a High Value-for-Money Life") |
| 10-27~11-04 | 1,610→1,771 | Organic daily growth of 10–60. |
| 11-02 | — | Sina: "After the earlier viral 《高性价比指南》, another masterpiece," signed "by yolo", posted from Singapore (likely the author's own post, not verified). |
| 11-05 | 1,784 | WeChat Official Account 「逛逛GitHub」 published on 人人都是产品经理 "These 7 GitHub projects will have your life perfectly planned, nearly 300k stars combined"; this one is number 6. |
| 11-06 | 1,879(+95) | A small rebound driven by second-wave spread. |
Data source: our github repo_profile / repo_day (from 10-17); gain_7d=172, prev_7d=270, cooling off.
III. Competitors
| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eternity4719/HowToLiveBetter 《高性价比人生指南》 | Open source | 2026-09-07 | 74k stars, single-day peak +2,451 (10-10); 果麦文化 published an e-book. | The prototype. 772 entries, covering health, personal finance, law and more, each with A/B/C evidence grades, citing only papers and official documents. HowToGetAlong copied the 12-column skeleton, search site, PDF and Skill, but dropped the evidence grading, replacing it with "all entries are experiential advice". |
| cdyforever/how-to-live-better | Open source | 2026-09-18 | 14k stars | The single-page reading version of HowToLiveBetter; a spin-off in the same universe. |
| BeckyGlobal/PaidToStudyAbroad, QERSSD/HowToAvoidScams, AIPMAndy/how-to-survive-unemployment, Bel1eff-0228/How-to-Train-Better, BryceYuuu/RUN | Open source | 2026-10 | 1.4k / 122 / 530 / 137 / 3.9k star | A wave of "XX Guide" knockoffs on different topics (studying abroad, avoiding scams, surviving unemployment, fitness, relocating). HowToGetAlong ranks mid-to-upper within that wave. |
| changxueyi/renqing-shigu 《人情世故指南》 | Open source | 2026-10-23 | 54 star | Same name and title, 31 chapters, 640 entries, CC BY 4.0; launched later and missed the buzz. Included in the HuiTurn mini-program. |
| SocialAI-tianji/Tianji (天机) | Open source | 2023-12 | 2,032 star | "An LLM that understands social savvy": an LLM tutorial and dataset for developers, not a handbook for students to read. |
| IvyYang1999/renqing-shigu-skill, Ming7177/renqing-shi-gu, t963891881-cell/zhongguoren | Open source | 2026-04~09 | 31 / 5 / 51 star | Only Skills or prompts, or else the cynical hustle/unwritten-rules route; no readable book, and it didn't catch the trend. |
| AkashRajpurohit/howtoprofessionallysay | Open source | 2022 | 1,280 star | English workplace-phrasing guides; same kind of need, but not in a Chinese context. |
| AI phrasing apps such as 高情商键盘 and 恋知道. | iOS | 2022–2026 | 恋知道 40k rating, 高情商键盘 7,852. | Dating-chat and AI reply-generation tools; they give one line per use and don't explain judgment or costs. |
| Books such as *Understanding Human Relations Every Day* and *A Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls in Human Relations* | WeRead and similar. | Years | A lot | Cynical hustle-culture or feel-good tone; HowToGetAlong deliberately "doesn't infer motives or write success rates", with a restrained tone. |
| 人情世故 creators on Douyin and Xiaohongshu. | Other | Always present | Huge scale | Fragmented and emotional; HowToGetAlong in turn supplies them material (a Douyin account already got licensing to make 102 short-video compilations). |
Conclusion: the content itself has no shortage of competitors; traditional books and short videos abound. But the format of "open-source GitHub repo + search site + clear costs for every entry" is the first one built for this topic; the later same-topic entrant (changxueyi, 54 stars) missed the window.
IV. Growth levers (where users come from)
- Riding HowToLiveBetter's name (confirmed). Nearly all promotional copy opens with "another masterpiece after 《高性价比人生指南》" (X @ilovek8s, Sina 10-20 and 11-02, Douban lists, the Smartpig post thread). HowToLiveBetter took off in September and was at its peak in October; it built a category in readers' minds, "free life manuals on GitHub", and readers of that category go looking for sequels.
- Weibo resource and cloud-drive accounts (confirmed). 10-20 multiple Weibo accounts posted on the same day, passing it around together with cloud-drive extraction codes and 樊登读书 resources, positioning it as a "viral PDF resource". That is the day the star curve 10-20 jumped.
- X accounts that specialize in sharing GitHub (confirmed). Geek Lite and Smartpig posted within a minute of each other around 10-21, +558 that day. Accounts like these publish daily GitHub recommendations and are the standard amplifiers in the Chinese GitHub scene.
- Long-tail aggregation and SEO reposts (confirmed). Dozens of sites reposted it, including codekk, trendshift, TiniX, baoshare, cnblogs, 51CTO, 中创网 and 冒泡网.
- WeChat Official Account roundup (confirmed). 「逛逛GitHub」's roundup of 11-05, corresponding to the +11-06 95.
- The author's own content accounts (partly confirmed). The README and PDF page 2 and the cover carry the Xiaohongshu account 4287159956 and Douyin account 793147359, but the follower counts for these two accounts were not checked. 11-02 The Sina post signed "by yolo" is very likely the author's own (not verified).
- No paid-acquisition evidence: the ad libraries were not checked. Fork/star ratio is about 6.9%, close to repos of similar size growing organically; the suspect flag in our repo database is empty.
5. Where the money comes back (the author is clearly monetizing)
- WeChat tip code (added 10-04).
- "Enhanced paid PDF": promoted and sold on Xiaohongshu, maintained separately (AGENTS.md states the paid version lives in the sibling directory HowToGetAlong-Paid, with versions in the P series).
- Publisher ebook: Douban Reading's "人情世故指南" (Renqing Shigu Guide), by author YOLO, supplied by Duke Culture, about 151k characters, 102 scenarios, list price ¥49.90 (read.douban.com/ebook/818664367). HowToLiveBetter's counterpart is Guomai Culture, and this project copied that step too.
- Adaptation license fee: 10-20 switched to a "personal non-commercial study license". 10-25 states a base license fee of ¥59.9 for adaptation, commentary and fan remixes; commercial ads are negotiated separately. There are already 5 license requests in Issues (a Douyin AI short-video project, two WeChat mini-programs, a science short-video project, website indexing), and on Douyin there is already a compilation titled "人情世故指南丨EP00… content version P1.2.1, with the author's formal commercial license".
So: the open-source repo earns reputation, reputation drives traffic to Xiaohongshu and Douyin, and then the paid version, ebook royalties, and license fees make money. For the author, stars are a means, not the goal.
6. Why this one broke out
- Timing: HowToLiveBetter launched 9-07 and gained 2,451 in a single day (+10-10), so people were looking for the next one. This project launched 10-02, early in the wave of "XX Guide" imitations.
- A broadly relatable topic: renqing shigu (lending money, turning down extra work, banquet toasts, who pays when the boss orders milk tea) is a common anxiety among young Chinese people, covering more people than study abroad, anti-scam, or fitness topics. People can share it without knowing anything about tech.
- The format shows care: 12-column structure, every entry lists a "cost" and an "exception," a searchable offline web page, and an AI Skill. A Cnblogs teardown specifically praised the unusual choice of "writing the cost into every entry." Compared with Douyin's "800 extra wits" style of dark-arts content, it reads as restrained and credible, and college students and parents are willing to pass it along.
- A ready-made PDF makes resource accounts share it: a finished 104-page PDF gives Weibo and cloud-drive resource accounts something to circulate.
- The author knows how to run it: the README deliberately drives traffic; frequent updates keep the project looking active on GitHub; and an early licensing policy turned reposting into revenue.
VII. Differentiation
- Compared with traditional renqing content: it doesn't teach dark arts, doesn't speculate about motives, and for each item states clearly "what it costs" and "when it doesn't work." The tone is that of an editor's advice. This is why it reads as credible and why big accounts feel safe reposting it.
- Compared with the prototype HowToLiveBetter: the subject is switched to interpersonal interaction; the evidence grading is dropped (honestly labeled "all entries are experiential advice"), which lowers the writing barrier.
- Compared with open-source projects on the same topic: it came earlier, has a complete reading site, and includes a PDF.
- Is differentiation why it took off? Partly. The decisive factor was the renqing shigu topic, plus the category heat of HowToLiveBetter. The 12 columns and "writing the cost" made it deserve to be called a "sequel," but form alone wouldn't have made it take off. The evidence: the same author's HowToLiveWithAI, built on the same template, has only 34 stars.
8. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: it's circulating in small circles. Chinese GitHub recommendation accounts, Weibo resource accounts, Cnblogs, and the WeChat account "逛逛GitHub" have covered it, but there's no media coverage and no big-influencer discussion (the X posts whose view counts are visible sit between 118 and 6,204 views). Revenue isn't public (ebook sales and license counts are unknown).
- Copycats: xiaobai5211314/HowToGetAlong (10-19, "Claude UI theme, pure edition," copies the README directly, 93 stars); changxueyi/renqing-shigu (same name, 640 commits, 54 stars); the HuiTurn/HowToLiveBetter mini-program folds "人情世故指南" into its life-guide library; deepskill.market has a "人情世故AI顾问 · howtogetalong" Skill; and a pile of blogs and repost sites offer the "complete original PDF."
9. What others can borrow
- Borrow the category, not the content: once an open-source "life manual" blows up, pick an adjacent topic with broad reach, build it on the same template (fixed columns + search page + PDF + AI Skill) within two weeks, and write the copy as "following XX."
- On format: give every entry a "cost and exception," which looks restrained and honest and gets shared; offer a downloadable PDF, and resource accounts and cloud-drive channels will spread it for you.
- The monetization chain: earn GitHub stars → put Xiaohongshu and Douyin QR codes on the README and the PDF's first page → sell an enhanced paid version → find a publisher for an ebook (Duke and Guomai both take this kind of book) → write a non-commercial license and publish a clear price for derivative-work licenses, turning reposting into revenue.
- The window is closing: this wave of "XX Guide" projects already has a dozen-plus imitations, and most won't reach a few hundred stars; the renqing shigu topic has already been taken, and the later same-topic project (54 stars) shows there's no room for a "second on the same topic."
10. What's unclear
- I couldn't find the Xiaohongshu and Douyin follower counts or the author's post data (TikHub doesn't cover those two accounts).
- Can't tell whether the Weibo accounts reposted it on their own or whether a resource account batch-reposted it. 10-20
- I don't know the actual sales of the ebook and paid PDF, or how many license deals closed.
- I can't tell where the first 225 stars came from between 10-02 and 10-17: there is a CSDN recommendation article with 10-15 and the author's own accounts, but no day-by-day data (our token can't pull stargazer timestamps).
- I didn't check ad libraries.
Sources
- GitHub repo, README, LICENSE, AGENTS.md, commit history, issues: github.com/kkk-bot/HowToGetAlong
- Our GitHub database repo_profile / repo_day (2026-10-17~11-06)
- Cnblogs iTech teardown: www.cnblogs.com/itech/p/23424035 (2026-10-24)
- X: x.com/QingQ77/status/2112767081523671180, x.com/Smartpigai/status/2112767455391256723 (10-21); x.com/ilovek8s/status/2112437021193154962 (10-20); x.com/weiwei2018831/status/2113120618963141031 (10-22); x.com/fhwofjow51260/status/2114332235709206902 (10-25,6,204 views)
- Sina Weibo: www.sina.cn/news/detail/5356121180080591.html, www.sina.cn/news/detail/5356139143497664.html (10-20); www.sina.cn/news/detail/5360927249008148.html (11-02)
- Bilibili: www.bilibili.com/video/BV1j4HK6vEvs/ (10-24)
- Douban Reading ebook (Duke Culture, ¥49.90): read.douban.com/ebook/818664367/
- "逛逛GitHub" roundup: www.woshipm.com/share/6489697.html (11-05)
- Prototype: github.com/eternity4719/HowToLiveBetter (the README states Guomai Culture publishes the ebook)
- Our App Store database (ratings of cn-store "high EQ" category apps)