Most people who are just starting to follow new AI tools make the same GitHub mistake: they think the Sponsors page does the persuading. That is backwards. If you only watch the button, you can waste time, budget, and attention on the wrong signal. For a repo like this, the README is the real Sponsors page.
That matters if you are the kind of reader who almost scrolls past a repo update, then stops because you are afraid you just missed something important. A project update is not worth your time because it lists more features. It matters when it changes your next decision. For Obra, the useful decision is not "Does it have Sponsors?" but "Did the front page already give me a reason to care?"
GitHub's own docs frame the sponsor button as a way to make funding options easier to see inside a repository. That is a visibility feature, not a persuasion engine. So the real pitch has to happen before the click.
Obra makes that point clearly. Its README already lays out five entry points on one screen: the generator, the Figma plugin, the React package, the Svelte package, and the website, while making clear that they belong to the same Obra Studio project. By the time someone notices Sponsors, the page has either sold the value or it has not.
The bigger takeaway is not "make your README prettier." A weak project does not become fundable because its front page looks cleaner. The narrower lesson is that you open the doors before you ask for support. README strategy comes before sponsor tiers.
A project update is not worth sharing because it lists more features. It is worth sharing when it changes your next decision.
Next step: when you size up an open-source project, do not start at the sponsor button. Start at the README and ask one plain question: does this page give me a concrete reason to use, save, or share the project? If yes, the button makes sense. If not, the button is decoration. Share this with anyone who still treats funding as a button problem instead of a front-page problem.