How TrueStars works

What it ranks

Every day TrueStars ranks the GitHub repos that gained the most stars the day before, and checks each one for signs that its stars are not real. Days run midnight to midnight US Pacific time, the same days GitHub uses.

Where the numbers come from

Finding repos. Each run looks at new repos with the most stars this month and this week (GitHub search), and at the repos starred most often in the last 24 hours of GH Archive, a public log of GitHub activity. GH Archive now records only a sample of stars, so it is used only to find repos, never to count.

Counting stars. Daily star counts come from GitHub's star-history API, so they are exact.

The fake-star check

GitHub no longer shows who starred a repo, so the check uses what is still public. Real projects usually draw forks, watchers and issues along with their stars; bought stars usually come alone. A repo gets a red flag when:

• it has fewer than 1 fork per 100 stars,
• fewer than 0.5 issues or pull requests per 1,000 stars (when issues are turned on),
• fewer than 0.5 watchers per 1,000 stars, or
• its stars stopped dead: a day with 100+ stars, then, within two days, under 1% of that a day. Real interest fades over several days.

The first three are checked from 300 stars up. An owner account younger than 90 days, or fewer than 3 commits, is normal for an honest launch, so those count only when one of the checks above also fails.

Repos with 2 or more red flags are left out of the ranking but stay visible under “Has red flags”. A flag is a reason to look closer, not proof of cheating. We never call a repo fake.

Why a repo may be trending

Each repo shows the reasons we can see: a Hacker News post with 20+ points in the last 14 days, a release in the last week, or a repo created in the last two weeks.

The badge

Every repo that makes the ranking gets a page and a badge showing its best daily rank. The badge updates itself every day. Copy it from the repo's page.

Not affiliated with GitHub

TrueStars is independent and uses GitHub's public API.