[jerelvelarde]

The problem

Someone who lands on this repo learns what OpenDots is, and not much about where it sits. Nothing near the top says that OpenDots also ships inside OpenBot as a skin, that OpenBot is the version CopilotKit maintains, or where to go to run it for a team instead of forking it. OpenBot does appear further down, as the service behind each Dot's computer and in the credits, but that is not where anyone deciding what to install is looking.

#180 answers this by opening the README with a notice that OpenDots now lives in OpenBot. That is accurate about where the maintained code is, but it sits above the name, the description and the demo, so the first thing a visitor reads is that the project has moved on. This repo still brings people in on its own, and a header that sends them away before they have seen what OpenDots does risks losing them for OpenBot as well.

The approach

The header stays OpenDots's. The name, description, badges, Trendshift badge and demo are where they were, and OpenBot comes in at four points.

A badge, "also a skin in OpenBot", in the existing row next to CI and license.

A lead line and a screenshot of OpenBot. "OpenDots is now available as a UX skin in OpenBot, a more robust version with sign-in, per-Bot permissions and an audit trail, maintained by CopilotKit. This repo stays a community-maintained starter for building your own project." Under it is OpenBot itself running the OpenDots skin, linked to OpenBot. The picture does the explaining: it is recognisably OpenDots, and it is OpenBot. The image is committed as docs/images/openbot-opendots-skin.png so it does not depend on an attachment URL.

The call link now reads "Bringing OpenDots to your company? Talk to us about OpenBot" and keeps its ref=opendots_readme tag, so its conversions compare directly with before.

An "OpenDots and OpenBot" section right after the demo video, before Overview. A three-row table sends someone who wants to try or fork OpenDots to this repo, someone who wants to run it for a team, with sign-in, per-Bot permissions and an audit trail, to OpenBot and its Skin setting, and someone who wants it stood up for them to an engineer. It ends by saying which repos are community maintained and which one the CopilotKit team ships fixes to. Its call link carries a new tag, ref=opendots_readme_openbot, so traffic from the section can be told apart from the header.

The cost is that the screenshot pushes OpenDots's own demo further down the first screen. That is the trade this version makes on purpose: a reader who stops at the first screen now sees OpenBot, and sees it as something they already recognise.

What is not covered

• Only the top of the README changes. Later sections still describe the repo on its own terms.
• The screenshot is OpenBot main at 72709c5, run locally in single-user mode with the two default Bots and four seeded chats. It is a still, so it goes stale when OpenBot's home screen changes, and it shows the empty composer rather than a conversation, because a conversation needs a live model and Intelligence project.
• The Settings → Skin path is OpenBot's current interface. If the setting moves, the caption and the routing table go stale.
• The same change is open for OpenMuse in Lead with OpenMuse as a skin in OpenBot, and show it openmuse#220 and OpenDuet in Lead with OpenDuet as a skin in OpenBot, and show it OpenDuet#98.

Verification

• The screenshots above are GitHub's own rendering of this branch's README, captured from the branch page.
• The OpenBot image was captured from OpenBot main (72709c5) with the skin set on the account through PATCH /api/settings/preferences, and the page's data-skin attribute confirmed it drew that skin.
• All 22 in-page links on the branch resolve to a heading in GitHub's render, and OpenBot#quick-start exists in OpenBot's README.
• Every new outbound link returns 200: OpenBot, the two sibling repos, the badge, and both talk-to-an-engineer links.
• prettier --check README.md passes with the repo's Prettier 3.9.9 and .prettierrc.json.
• The diff is README.md and docs/images/openbot-opendots-skin.png, in two commits on top of main.

Merge notes

This is an alternative to #180. Both rewrite the top of README.md, so whichever merges, the other should be closed rather than rebased.