7 underrated GitHub projects that will blow your mind 🤯

Mohit Vaswani
JavaScript in Plain English
4 min readJun 2, 2024

Building a robust portfolio is essential for any developer looking to showcase their skills and attract potential employers. While popular open-source projects like TensorFlow or React are well-known, there are numerous lesser-known yet highly valuable projects that can significantly enhance your portfolio. Here are seven open-source projects that you might not have heard of but are definitely worth your time.

So let’s start the list:

1. Medusa

medusajs.com

Medusa is an open-source headless commerce engine built with Node.js. It’s designed to be scalable and customizable, making it perfect for developers looking to delve into e-commerce solutions. Medusa provides a robust set of APIs for managing products, orders, and customers, allowing you to build flexible and efficient online stores.

Why It’s Useful: Working on Medusa can demonstrate your ability to handle complex back-end systems and your understanding of e-commerce architectures.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/medusajs/medusa

2. Tauri

tauri.app

Tauri is a toolkit for building highly secure, tiny, and fast desktop applications using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It provides bindings to native APIs without the overhead of a full browser, making applications lean and performant.

Why It’s Useful: Contributing to Tauri shows your ability to work with desktop applications and understand cross-platform development, a valuable skill set in the current job market.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

3. Directus

directus.io

Directus is an open-source headless CMS that enables you to manage content without the need for a traditional backend. It connects to any SQL database and provides a flexible API for content management.

Why It’s Useful: Directus allows you to demonstrate your skills in building content management systems and working with SQL databases, showcasing both front-end and back-end expertise.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/directus/directus

4. Cal.com

cal.com

Cal.com is an open-source scheduling platform that integrates with various calendar systems like Google Calendar and Outlook. It’s designed for developers to customize and integrate into their own applications.

Why It’s Useful: Working on Cal.com highlights your ability to integrate third-party services and create user-friendly scheduling systems, an asset for companies looking to improve productivity tools.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/calcom/cal.com

5. Budibase

budibase.com

Budibase is an open-source low-code platform for building internal tools. It provides a visual builder to create applications quickly and integrates with various data sources.

Why It’s Useful: Budibase can showcase your skills in rapid application development and your understanding of low-code platforms, which are becoming increasingly popular in enterprise environments.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/Budibase/budibase

6. RedwoodJS

redwoodjs.com

RedwoodJS is a full-stack framework built on React, GraphQL, and Prisma. It’s designed to help developers build and deploy Jamstack applications quickly.

Why It’s Useful: Contributing to RedwoodJS demonstrates your proficiency with modern web technologies and your ability to build scalable web applications, which is an impressive addition to any portfolio.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/redwoodjs/redwood

7. Appwrite

appwrite.io

Appwrite is an open-source backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that provides developers with a set of REST APIs to handle authentication, databases, storage, and more. It aims to simplify the development of secure and scalable applications.

Why It’s Useful: Appwrite allows you to showcase your backend development skills and your ability to work with BaaS platforms, making you versatile in both front-end and back-end development.

GitHub Link: https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite

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