---
title: "Maintenance label"
type: "glossary-term"
category: "Trust & signals"
canonical_url: "https://www.graphcanon.com/glossary/trust-and-signals/maintenance-label"
updated: "2026-07-09"
---

# 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.**

The **maintenance label** is a heuristic derived from public GitHub metadata, mainly the last-push date. Buckets run from Very active (pushed within days) through Steady and Slowing to Dormant, with Archived treated as unmaintained by definition.

It describes *activity recency*, not code quality or security. A dormant label is a prompt to look closer, not a failing grade.

## In GraphCanon

The label is computed on ingest and on each GitHub sync, and appears on tool rows, tool pages, and compare pages. The exact thresholds are documented in the trust methodology.

## See also

- [How trust signals work](/trust-methodology)

## Related terms

- [Trust signal](/glossary/trust-and-signals/trust-signal.md)
- [Freshness](/glossary/corpus-and-data/freshness.md)

[Trust & signals](/glossary/trust-and-signals.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/_