Open-Box: a soft-router YouTuber built a closed-source proxy tool that gained 2,500 stars in 82 days, driven by his own channel

On 2026 7 Sep, YouTuber 「安格视界」 posted a video with a bold title: 「最新软路由代理 Open-Box 发布!全图形极简配置,超越 OpenClash/Nikki/Passwall」 ("New soft-router proxy Open-Box is out! Fully graphical, minimal setup, beats OpenClash/Nikki/Passwall"). As of today, the video has 93,935 views and 772 comments (YouTube, 11-06). The same day, the Open-Box repo on GitHub got its first issue. 82 days later, the repo has over 2,500 stars, over 470 forks, and over 800 issues. It is not open source: the second paragraph of the README says "The program is closed-source proprietary software, not an open-source project." This piece looks at why it took off, and which parts you can copy if you want a project that gets stars like this, and which parts you can't.

What it is

A "split-tunneling" tool that runs on a soft router, plus phone and desktop clients. The router side supports OpenWrt (including iStoreOS and ImmortalWrt), Debian / Ubuntu, and Docker, and installs with a single command. The package bundles the sing-box core, the Node runtime, and the full GeoSite / GeoIP rule data. After install, you set up subscriptions, nodes, and routing rules by clicking through a browser, with no hand-written config files. Clients cover Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, pair with your home router by QR code, and follow the same rules when you're away from home.

There's nothing new technically. Its core is a modified sing-box, with two changes: "direct connections bypass the core" (domestic traffic is released right at the firewall entry) and "switching routes doesn't restart the core." The real difference is in packaging and UI: the dashboard looks good, with latency curves, per-device traffic stats, and a rule simulation tester. The author previously built a modded version of the open-source dashboard zashboard (AnGe-ClashBoard, 572 stars), and that's where the UI polish came from.

Why this one took off

The creator already has a precise audience. The channel @Ange-Digital-Life has 40k subscribers and 2.82M total views, and has run a "Perfect Network" series for two years: how to set up OpenClash, self-hosted nodes, residential IPs. His OpenClash config repo on GitHub has 1,484 stars. The people who watch this channel are already tinkering with OpenClash on soft routers and have been worn down by config files. A top-liked comment under the launch video says: "I've always just followed the expert's settings."

One feature per video, pushed for two straight months. After launch, 9-14 covered the built-in ADGuard Home integration, 9-27 covered a modified core with "direct connections up 200%, on par with Dae," 10-05 shipped an Android client (titled "Time to uninstall Karing/ClashMi and other proxy apps"), 10-08 shipped Windows / macOS, 10-12 shipped Linux, and 11-06 was another one. Each video got 10k to 30k views. Stars followed the videos: the biggest single day was 10-10, +51, right after the Win/mac client video.

It hits an old pain point. OpenClash and PassWall work, but you have to write YAML, and there are dozens of config options. Rules on the router and rules on the phone don't match. A post on linux.do from someone who introduced it put it bluntly: "Right now I use OpenClash on my home router and Karing on my phone outside, and the rules aren't unified. This project lets my phone use my home router's config even when I'm out." The video comments say the same thing: "I spent days on passwall and openclash, running into all kinds of problems. Switched to this open-box and got everything working in 20 minutes."

Updates come fast, clearly actively maintained. The version number has reached v0.1.412, with several releases some days. One user comment reads, "New versions every day, and my OCD can only keep up by updating every day too." The latest upgrade script got 1,491 downloads within a few hours of release (GitHub Release, 11-06).

Are the users real?

We can't get the star breakdown for this repo (GitHub doesn't return the list of who starred it), so we can't rule out star-buying. But the indirect signals hold up: 823 issues came from 380 different accounts, covering install failures, upgrade failures and requests for new split-routing rules. They read like real usage. September had 347 and October had 426, which lines up with the video schedule.

Up +144 last week, more than OpenClash (+85), ShellCrash (+31) and HomeProxy (+6), and only behind sing-box itself (+280) (GitHub, 11-06).

Outside platforms, the buzz is tiny: just one repost on X, no media coverage, and it never made it onto Hacker News. Developer reception is mixed. The linux.do thread title has an added note at the end, "Turns out it's closed source, pass" (inferred to be appended by the original poster after reading the replies). The top replies say: "Why use it if it's not open source?" and "If it's not open source, just pass. You never know what extra stuff they'll slip in." The most-liked comment under the launch video (177 likes) is also critical: "It's basically just a UI built on the sing-box core... how does this beat everything else?"

So the stars mostly came from YouTube viewers, people who don't write code and just want something they can install and use, not developers on GitHub.

So the stars mostly came from the YouTube side: soft-router users who don't write code and just want something that works once installed, not GitHub developers.

It charges money. The official site open-box.sbs says: free forever on the router side. Pro (shared network + clients for four platforms) is ¥99/year or a ¥599 one-time purchase, one license per router, with a 14-day trial. Pro purchases are currently "not yet open".

The other side is a storefront. The README's "Recommended Services" section links the author's "Angel Supermarket" (airport proxies, VPS, residential IPs) and two AI API resellers. The first line of the video description reads "Lowest-price airport, VPN, VPS, GPT, Netflix pooled accounts and residential IP purchases across the web", and the second line reads "Enterprise IT planning / ops / AI deployment consulting". Open-Box itself has a "chained proxy" feature built to route through residential IPs, which pairs neatly with what the supermarket sells. For the author, Open-Box is a new hook for the channel and the storefront business, and the stars are a bonus.

Who it's competing with

This category is old and crowded (GitHub stars, 11-06):

Form-based config, dated interface

If it were you

C. What you can learn is the playbook; what you can take is very little. What pushed it up was the creator's two years of building a router-user audience of 40k and a run of 7 videos, and this follower has neither. Without a channel, a proxy tool is hard to find on GitHub. HomeProxy uses the same core and is open source, yet it has only 1,100 stars after three years. The topic carries risk too: authors of this kind of tool have deleted their repos and stopped updating before (in 2023, a batch of November clients including Clash for Windows wiped their repos all at once). The more famous the project, the bigger that risk.

Who this is for: people who already have an audience in some niche (YouTube, Bilibili, a blog, a Telegram group all count) and a question their followers keep asking. This is a guide to using your own audience as your first users.

Not for: anyone without a distribution channel who expects GitHub organic traffic to drive stars, or anyone unwilling to take on the compliance risk of proxy tools.

How to build it: two paths. One is to do what the incumbent does badly: the biggest complaint in the dev community is that it's closed source, and an open-source "router + client, one rule set" approach has a clear gap. You could add client sync on top of HomeProxy or nikki instead of writing from scratch. The other is to copy the structure, not the topic: pick an open-source tool your audience already uses but finds notoriously hard to set up (NAS, home media, smart home, intranet tunneling), bundle the core and its dependencies into one package, install with a single command, make all configuration graphical, and put screenshots and a video on the first screen of the README.

How to get users: At launch, publish one video on your own channel, with a title that compares it directly to the established tools ("Beats OpenClash" gets you flamed, but it also gets you views). After that, put out a new video every time you add a platform or a major feature, and link them all in the README in order. Before posting on linux.do or V2EX, have an answer ready for "why isn't it open source?"

Deadline: no hard deadline. But Open-Box's iOS client is already being teased. Once the pro version goes on sale, "same rules on router and phone" becomes its mature selling point, so an open-source alternative should claim the space before then.

What would prove this wrong: (1) after the pro version launches, someone builds an open-source equivalent on GitHub and gets a thousand stars within a month or two, which would show the gap is real and the grade should go up; (2) Open-Box keeps gaining a hundred or two hundred stars a week even after the author stops posting videos, which would show the product spreads on its own and isn't entirely channel-driven.

Data and sources

• GitHub: liandu2024/Open-Box README, Releases, Issues; daily star history (from 10-17); competitor star counts (11-06).
• YouTube: @Ange-Digital-Life channel data and view counts for the 7 Open-Box series videos; description and comments of the launch video (youtu.be/G_7AmjfSRQ8) (11-06).
• open-box.sbs/pricing; blog.angeworld.cc/market.
• linux.do: the post "Discovered a new proxy tool, Open-Box" (10-08).
• X: a repost by @QingQ77 09-09.
• Unverified: the true source of the stars (the starring list isn't accessible); conversion and revenue from the pro version; Telegram group size; whether Bilibili and other platforms are reposting it.