---
title: "Momentum (star velocity)"
type: "glossary-term"
category: "Trust & signals"
canonical_url: "https://www.graphcanon.com/glossary/trust-and-signals/momentum"
updated: "2026-07-09"
---

# Momentum (star velocity)

_Also known as: 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.**

**Momentum** measures how fast a project is gaining traction lately, most often as its change in GitHub stars over a trailing window. It highlights what is heating up right now, independent of absolute size.

Velocity is noisy - a launch, a conference talk, or a viral post can spike it - so read it as attention, not endorsement.

## In GraphCanon

GraphCanon computes 30-day star deltas from metric snapshots and uses them to rank the trending page. It is explicitly a freshness signal, not a measure of quality.

## See also

- [Trending tools](/trending)

## Related terms

- [Metric snapshot](/glossary/corpus-and-data/metric-snapshot.md)
- [Stars](/glossary/trust-and-signals/stars.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/_