I've thought about this. Even in the pre-LLM era, projects were rarely judged by the quality of their source code. READMEs and slick demos were the focus. So in some sense nothing has changed.

The difference now is that there is even less correlation between "good readme" and "thoughtful project".

I think that if your goal is to signal credentials/effort in 2026 (which is not everyone's goal), a better approach is to write about your motivations and process rather than the artefact itself - tell a story.