The README Sells Before the Sponsors Tab Does

If you judge a repo by its Sponsors tab, you may be looking at the wrong page. On Obra, the README is doing the selling first. The page people read before they click matters more [C002].

That is the useful part of sponsors / obra for people tracking new tools. A repo page is not just project notes. It is the first explanation of why the project matters. If that page is weak, the funding ask arrives before the context [C001].

Obra's README already works like an entry page. It gives people five doors in one place: generator, Figma plugin, React package, Svelte package, and website. That is closer to a storefront than a project intro.

GitHub's own docs make this read harder to ignore. The sponsor button exists to make funding options more visible inside the repo. Useful, yes, but the repo page around that button still has to persuade.

My boundary is narrow: I only looked at GitHub Docs plus Obra's public repo page and README. No payout numbers or conversion data. So this is not "packaging beats product." A project update is worth sharing when it changes your next decision, not when it lists the most features. If a friend is turning on GitHub Sponsors, send them this: entry page first, tiers second.