---
title: "Glossary: Trust & signals"
type: "glossary-category"
canonical_url: "https://www.graphcanon.com/glossary/trust-and-signals"
---

# Trust & signals

_What the numbers, labels, and badges on a tool page actually mean - and what they deliberately do not._

Key concepts: Maintenance, Momentum, Provenance, Security scans

## Adoption

Adoption is how widely a tool is actually used. Stars approximate attention; real adoption blends multiple signals like dependents, releases, and backing.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/adoption.md)

## 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.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/maintenance-label.md)

## 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.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/momentum.md)

## 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.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/security-scan.md)

## 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.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/stars.md)

## 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.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/trust-signal.md)

## 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.

[Read more](/glossary/trust-and-signals/verified-publisher.md)

[All glossary terms](/glossary.md)

---

**Machine-readable endpoints**

- JSON: [`/api/graphcanon`](/api/graphcanon)
- LLM index: [/llms.txt](/llms.txt)
- Full corpus: [/llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt)

_GraphCanon - The knowledge graph for AI development. https://www.graphcanon.com/_