> it felt like validation for my little side project

Yep, that can be useful motivation to get a side project past "works for me" through to "works for others".

The pgautoupgrade project (https://github.com/pgautoupgrade/docker-pgautoupgrade) was one of those. It seems to be going ok too, as others have come along and picked up the majority of development (I'm ~outta time). :)