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

# 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.**

**Stars** are the count of GitHub users who bookmarked a repository. They are the most visible popularity number in open source: easy to read and compare across projects.

But stars are a blunt instrument. They accumulate over a project's whole life (so they favor older tools), can be inflated, and say nothing about whether the code is maintained or fit for your use.

## In GraphCanon

GraphCanon shows stars as one fact among many and pairs them with maintenance and momentum, rather than ranking tools by stars alone.

## See also

- [Trending tools](/trending)

## Related terms

- [Momentum (star velocity)](/glossary/trust-and-signals/momentum.md)
- [Adoption](/glossary/trust-and-signals/adoption.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/_