Category
Trust & signals
What the numbers, labels, and badges on a tool page actually mean - and what they deliberately do not.
- Maintenance
- Momentum
- Provenance
- Security scans
7 terms
Adoption
Adoption is how widely a tool is actually used. Stars approximate attention; real adoption blends multiple signals like dependents, releases, and backing.
Maintenance label
The maintenance label summarizes how recently a repository was worked on - from Very active to Dormant or Archived - based on public GitHub activity.
Momentum (star velocity)
Momentum is the recent rate of change in a tool's popularity - typically its star gain over the last 30 days - a freshness signal, not a quality score.
Security scan
A security scan checks a repository's declared dependencies against known-vulnerability databases; a clean result is not proof a project is secure.
Stars
Stars are GitHub bookmarks users give a repo. They approximate attention and are easy to compare, but they are a lagging, gameable popularity signal.
Trust signal
A trust signal is a sourced, dated heuristic that helps you judge a tool - a decision input, not a certification or safety guarantee.
Verified publisher
A verified publisher badge means a signed-in GitHub user with admin access to the repo has claimed the listing - distinct from an automated owner-type guess.