Square Town for open-source projects: your docs favicon on the wall for $1

Your project exists as a repo, a docs site and a badge. For a dollar it can also exist somewhere visual.

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall where each 1×1 square costs $1, one-time, and shows a site's favicon linked to its URL. For an open-source project, that means the docs site — or the GitHub repo, if that's the front door — gets a permanent, visible square that anyone can click through, that the community can "kiss" to keep alive, and that costs less than the coffee you drink while triaging issues.

TL;DR for maintainers. Paste your docs URL, click a cell, pay $1. No account, no logo upload. Your project's favicon sits on a live 3D wall; clicks are counted; anyone can kiss the icon for free (public, counted, resets the 90-day fade). A maintainer with several projects can put each on its own square, side by side. Rulebook: How Square Town works — the complete rulebook.

The problem: open-source projects have nowhere visual to exist#

An open-source project lives as a repo, a docs site, a package registry page and a README badge. All text, all searchable, none of it seen. There's no logo wall you'd want to pay monthly for, and paying a launch platform for a library feels wrong. Meanwhile the maintainer of five small libraries has five docs sites and no way to show them together except a list on a personal page.

Square Town doesn't fix open-source funding or discovery. It gives a project a $1 spot on a shared map that people actually look at, and gives the community a free thing to do for the project that isn't a star.

What a $1 square gives you#

1. A permanent square for the docs site. Your project's favicon in the cell you chose, on a wall visible to everyone with it open, no expiry and no renewal. Forever*, where the asterisk is "unless someone pays $2 to evict you".
2. A counted click-through. Clicks go via /go/:id, are counted per square, and arrive at your docs tagged utm_source=square.pov.town&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=square. If your docs host has analytics, that's a referral row.
3. Kisses from your community. Anyone can click your icon and press 💋. It's free, it's public, it's counted, and it resets the 90-day timer after which an unkissed icon fades to grayscale. Tell your Discord or your release notes "kiss the icon" and see who does. There's a most-kissed leaderboard. This is the closest thing Square Town has to a star button, except it wears off. Kiss the icon explains the mechanic.
4. Views and clicks on a deed page. After buying you get a secret deed URL showing views, clicks and kisses. $5 one-time adds per-day charts. Most projects won't need that; a project with a real docs site and a release cadence might like to see the spike after a release.
5. A tower that shows usage. Tilt the wall (ctrl+drag) and every favicon is a box as tall as its click count. A well-used project's docs site gets taller. It's a crude, honest, public signal.
6. Every project side by side. A maintainer with several projects — the main library, its CLI, the plugin, the docs — can put each on its own square, in adjacent cells, for a dollar each. See Showcase all your projects as favicons; the multi-project playbook in Square Town for developers with many side projects applies unchanged.

How to do it#

1. Pick the URL that is the project's front door. Usually the docs site (docs.yourproject.dev), because it has its own favicon and is where you want people to land. The GitHub repo works, but its favicon is GitHub's — every repo on the wall would look the same. If the project only has a repo, consider whether the README is really where you want a click to go.
2. Make sure that site serves a favicon. Most static-site and docs generators do; check the browser tab. No favicon means a clown emoji on the wall and a public Hall of Clowns entry until you fix it — How to add a favicon is a five-minute job.
3. Open square.pov.town, click an empty cell. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; the gold Throne is the 4×4 in the middle and its surrounding ring can't be built on. Cells near the centre get seen most.
4. Paste the URL, pay $1. Stripe, card, done. Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service.
5. Save the deed URL somewhere the project owns. A private note in the org, a maintainers' channel pin, a password manager entry. Not just your own browser's "My deeds" button — projects outlive maintainers' laptops. No accounts means no recovery.
6. Tell the community. A line in the next release notes: "We're on the wall — kiss the icon." Kissing is free, and it's the one thing that keeps the square from fading.
7. Repeat for sibling projects, in adjacent cells if they're free.

Tips#

• Pick a spot near the Throne if visibility matters more than permanence. The centre gets looked at and gets evicted. A few cells out is calmer. How to pick a good square covers the trade-off.
• Kiss it, and get others to. 90 days without a kiss and the icon goes grayscale — still owned, still linked, but visibly neglected. A project with any community at all should never fade.
• Don't be a clown. The docs site needs a favicon. If your generator's default favicon is the generator's logo, replace it — otherwise you're advertising the generator.
• Buy the analytics unlock only if you'll look at it. $5, once, per square, for per-day charts. Useful around releases; not needed for a stable library.
• Save the deed URL at the project level, not the person level.
• Use the API if you like dashboards. GET https://square.pov.town/api/state returns every listing's domain, clicks, views and kisses as JSON. Filter for your domains and you can put the numbers on your project's status page. See Square Town API — read the wall, buy a square.

What it won't do#

• It won't help your docs rank. The wall is a WebGL canvas and clicks are 302 redirects; there is no backlink and no link equity.
• It won't bring you contributors, or promise any traffic. Clicks are counted; volumes aren't promised.
• It won't stop an eviction. Anyone can take a $1 square for $2. The next person pays $4. If a rival project evicts you, that's the game — and it's public.
• It won't recover a lost deed. No accounts, no email. Store the deed URL somewhere the project can find it.
• It won't take a logo upload or a bigger tile. Favicon and URL only, 1×1 only. The Throne (4×4, $100 intro price, doubling per eviction) is the single exception, and it's a stunt, not a plan.

FAQ#

Should I use the GitHub repo URL or the docs site?#

The docs site, if you have one. Its favicon is your icon; the repo's favicon is GitHub's, so every repo on the wall looks identical. Use the repo only if it's genuinely the project's front door.

Can the community do anything besides click?#

Yes — kiss the icon. Anyone can click your square and press 💋; it's free, public and counted, and it resets the 90-day fade timer. There's a most-kissed leaderboard.

What happens if nobody kisses our icon for 90 days?#

It fades to grayscale (💔). It's still yours and still linked; it just looks neglected. One kiss from anyone restores it.

Who should hold the deed URL for a project?#

The project, not a person: a maintainers' channel pin, an org password manager, or a private note. There are no accounts, so a lost deed can't be recovered.

Does a square on Square Town count as a backlink for the docs?#

No. Clicks are counted redirects through /go/:id, and the wall is a canvas element. There's no link equity or ranking benefit.

Can a maintainer put several projects on the wall?#

Yes — one square per URL at $1 each. Buy adjacent cells and they form a block. Each square has its own deed and its own view/click/kiss counts.

Can we spend project sponsorship money on this?#

That's between you and your sponsors, but at $1 one-time (plus an optional $5 for per-day analytics) it's below most people's threshold for asking.