A large part of intentionally building a community is removing barriers to entry. If you have a large following some barriers can improve the average quality, but starting out they do slow down growth. Fossil is cool. I've used it for some projects of my own in the past, but it's not a common tool, so it will limit who will check out the development of a project. I know with some tooling I have preferences which increase the barrier to entry, but I try to acknowledge that some personal preferences do limit community growth.

It's 100% fine to develop things which are openly available, but not try to build a community. That seems to match your description with your current setup.