# mahmoud/boltons

🔩 Like builtins, but boltons. 250+ constructs, recipes, and snippets which extend (and rely on nothing but) the Python standard library.  Nothing like Michael Bolton.

Repository: https://github.com/mahmoud/boltons
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/boltons
Homepage: https://boltons.readthedocs.org
Language: Python
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: python, utilities, cache, data-structures, statistics, data-science, file, queue, json, recursive, standard-library
Last push: 2026-08-19T09:01:44+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 88/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 69, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4942, "days_push": 14, "days_rel": 47, "gap_med": 95, "n_releases_24m": 4}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 6917, forks 414 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:51.377454+00:00)

## What it is
Boltons is a set of 250+ pure-Python utility constructs, recipes, and snippets that extend the Python standard library with no external dependencies. It includes modules for atomic file saving, ordered multidicts, priority queues, chunked/windowed iteration, recursive data structure manipulation, and traceback handling.

## Use cases
- atomically save files without corruption
- chunk or window iterable data
- recursively transform nested dicts and lists
- use an ordered multidict in Python
- get detailed traceback info programmatically
- implement exponential backoff with jitter
- use a priority queue without extra dependencies

## When to choose
- you want stdlib-only utilities with zero dependencies
- you need well-tested data structure and iteration helpers
- you want atomic file writes in pure Python

## When to avoid
- you need heavy NumPy/pandas-style data processing
- you prefer a batteries-included framework over small utilities
- you need async-first or type-annotated modern APIs

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: developer-tools, caching, file-system, concurrency, error-handling, data-science
- domain: developer-tools, data-science
- platform: python, cross-platform
- tags: standard-library-extensions, utilities, pure-python, data-structures, iterutils, atomic-file-save, algorithms

## Member repositories
- mahmoud/boltons (main) score 88

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:51.377454+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:41:26.617619+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/mahmoud/boltons (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:51.377454+00:00, sha 2923409119f6)
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/boltons/json (fetched 2026-08-29T08:37:45.962517+00:00, sha 4a4c63e528c4)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.