docs(readme): star-the-repo asks at the three highest-goodwill moments — README top, end of Quick Start, and the start.sh next-steps card #2885

Summary

Add a single, reasoned "star the repo" ask at each of the three moments where a visitor or installer is most likely to act on it: (1) the README top, directly under the badge row; (2) the end of the README Quick Start; (3) the closing "Your next steps" card that scripts/deploy/start.sh prints on every successful boot (local and --hosted).

Context

GitHub stars are an explicit growth goal — they drive discovery (trending sort, awesome-lists, credibility weight on HN and elsewhere). Today the README carries a passive Stars badge and no ask anywhere; start.sh's closing card — read by every installer at the exact moment the platform came up — is silent.

Two very different visitors land on the README:

• Cold — found it via search or a docs link; must be persuaded before they'll star. For them, the Quick Start tail and the start.sh card are the right moments: after value delivery.
• Warm — arrived from HN, a tweet, a newsletter, a colleague. Already persuaded by the referrer; they star within seconds of landing, often before reading. When traffic is being driven, this cohort dominates, and the top of the page is the highest-conversion spot.

What keeps this inside Trinity's understated voice is the register, not the count: one honest sentence per surface, each with a real reason ("it's how other people find Trinity"), no exclamation marks, no "please", nothing repeated on a surface.

Acceptance Criteria

• README top: one line directly under the badge row — Find this useful? ⭐ Star the repo — it's how other people find Trinity. — as a > blockquote, consistent with the file's other one-line callouts. No GIF, no star-history chart (deferred until the curve is worth showing).
• README Quick Start tail: the same ask at the end of the Quick Start section, paired with a soft escape hatch (Ran into a rough edge? File an issue — we read them.) so it does not read as assuming everyone loved it.
• scripts/deploy/start.sh: one line inside the "Your next steps" card, after step 3 and before the closing rule, on BOTH the local and --hosted paths: ⭐ If this was easy, star the repo — it's how other people find Trinity: followed by the raw URL https://github.com/abilityai/trinity on its own line (raw so it is copyable in every terminal and linkified in modern ones). Prints on every start — one line in a card that already repeats is not a nag; no first-run gate.
• Register: no exclamation marks, no "please", exactly one ask per surface.
• Placeholder discipline: the only URL is the public repo URL; no internal hosts, no emails.
• Any existing test that snapshots or greps start.sh output still passes; the card's step numbering (1–3) is unchanged.

Technical Notes

• README top structure today: hero → nav row → badges → [!NOTE] release callout → video → intro. The line goes between the badges and the release callout.
• The start.sh closing card lives in scripts/deploy/start.sh (the ── Your next steps ── block). The local/--hosted split that follows it is AFTER the card, so a single insertion inside the card covers both paths.
• Deliberately out of scope: an in-app ask on the first-run front desk (a separate decision on a different surface), a star-history embed, an animated star GIF.

Related

• README v0.9.5 refresh (docs(readme): v0.9.5 release banner, DigitalOcean install, refreshed features #2881, docs(readme): drop the managed-hosting offer, point to the DigitalOcean install #2883) — the surface this edits
• start.sh next-steps card (Vectorized Episodic Memory #39), the --hosted path (feat: prebuilt images + pull-only hosted compose + unattended cloud-init first boot — the gate for every one-click / marketplace channel #2280), the post-bug(security): fresh install leaves setup_completed=false with a real admin — unauthenticated /api/setup/admin-password overwrites the admin password #2381 wizard copy — the card's history