https://httpie.io/ has a star display on the homepage, and the story https://httpie.io/about alludes to the star count:

> That humble tool, which we open-sourced, quickly captured developers’ hearts and rapidly became one of the top projects on GitHub.

> We’ve raised a Seed Round ...

It's not hard to believe the seed round and the entire pitch of the commercial venture was tied to the star count, and it's not hard to believe that the author would drop $1/star to restore the count.