Aster — track the creators you learn from
Aster is a free, personal way to track the content creators you learn from, across every platform and every subject — AI, biology, economics, design, anything. It exists for one reason: summaries and reposts arrive late and second-hand, so Aster keeps you one tap from the first-hand source. Save each creator once — by pasting their profile link — and Aster organises them by subject and platform, fetches their name and avatar automatically, and shows how recently each one last posted.
Every platform, one shelf
Aster recognises creators on YouTube, X (Twitter), GitHub, LinkedIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, self-hosted podcasts and blogs, Substack, Bilibili, Rednote (Xiaohongshu), and WeChat official accounts (公众号). International and Chinese platforms live side by side on the same shelf.
See who posted, at a glance
Each creator row shows a small "last posted" label — 3d ago, 2w ago, 1yr+ ago — checked quietly in the background on YouTube, GitHub, podcasts, Substack, Bilibili, LinkedIn and X. Creators who published in the last 24 hours get a gentle highlight, so you always know where the fresh thinking is.
People, not feeds
Aster is not an RSS reader and not a bookmark pile. There are no unread counts and no infinite feeds — just a calm shelf: subject → platform → creator. One tap opens their page.
What's on the shelf today
| Feature | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
| One shelf: subject → platform → creator | Organise every field you learn from; one tap opens the creator's page | ✓ Shipped |
| Paste a link, creator recognised | Name and avatar fetched automatically — YouTube, X, GitHub, LinkedIn, podcasts, Substack, Bilibili, Rednote, WeChat 公众号 (via any article link) | ✓ Shipped |
| "Last posted" age on every row | Checked quietly in the background; fresh posts glow, busy posters show a posts-per-day density label | ✓ Shipped |
| Reading guide | Every post in the Feed carries an AI one-line summary, a topic label and a time cost, in your language — built daily at the hour you pick | ✓ Shipped |
| Feed | Every post from your creators in one chronological stream — no algorithm, no AI filter; you judge the noise | ✓ Shipped |
| Activity | Who is actually publishing this week — accounts merged into one person across platforms, a seven-day meter, and an AI line on each | ✓ Shipped |
| Account discovery | New additions only — public bios, profile links and avatars support high-confidence identity matches you review | ✓ Shipped |
| Bulk import | Paste a follow list or drop screenshots — OCR and AI parse them into shelf rows with links found for you | ✓ Shipped |
| Global search | Every creator, one search box, straight to their page | ✓ Shipped |
| Guest mode | Try everything without an account — nothing saved until you sign up | ✓ Shipped |
| The Space — shared shelves | Formerly the Hall. Built on information equality: a great follow-list shouldn't be a privilege, so shelves can be discovered and copied by anyone. Sharing stays optional — Private or Public. | Upcoming |
A personal tracker, not a marketing dashboard
Most cross-platform creator tools are built for brands: social-media analytics suites like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Keyhole or HypeAuditor track engagement rates, audience demographics and campaign performance — powerful, and priced for companies. Aster sits on the other side: it is for individuals who simply want to keep up with the creators they follow. Compared with an RSS reader (Feedly, Inoreader), Aster tracks people rather than article feeds, and covers platforms RSS can't reach, like X, LinkedIn and Bilibili. Compared with a hand-made Notion or spreadsheet database, Aster fills itself in — names, avatars and last-posted dates arrive automatically. And unlike the marketing suites, it is free.
Why Aster exists
There has never been more to learn from — and never been a worse way to learn it. Every field lives across a dozen platforms, so most people end up learning through middlemen: summaries and reposts that arrive late and second-hand. Aster is built on the opposite idea — stay close to first-hand, high-quality sources, and choose them deliberately, because attention is finite. Its core value is information equality: a great follow-list shouldn't be a privilege, which is what the upcoming Space is for. Aster is an independent project, built in public by a first-time builder with the help of coding agents — feedback is genuinely welcome.
Free, fast, yours
Browse as a guest without an account, or sign in with Google or email to keep your shelf synced. Aster is free to use at astershelf.space.