Build a simple subscriber count badge / public stats page

[kamsirichard]

Context

ScoutBot has 507 subscribers and growing. There's no way for visitors to the repo or website to see live subscriber counts, scrape activity, or opportunity totals. A simple public stats endpoint would make the project feel more alive and credible to potential contributors and donors.

Task — choose one or both:

Option A: Dynamic README badge

Use a service like shields.io with a custom endpoint that returns the subscriber count in badge format.

Requires a tiny hosted function (Vercel, Railway, or GitHub Pages) that reads the Google Sheet subscriber count and returns:

{"schemaVersion": 1, "label": "subscribers", "message": "507", "color": "green"}

Option B: Static stats in README

Add a stats/ folder and a GitHub Actions workflow that runs weekly, reads the sheet, and commits an updated stats/README_stats.md with current numbers.

Then embed it in the main README:

<!-- stats start -->
507 subscribers · 1,200+ opportunities indexed · 30 sources
<!-- stats end -->

Files to touch

• README.md
• New workflow or script

Notes

• Keep service account credentials out of any public endpoint
• Option B (static) is simpler and has no security risk