# Rich-Harris/butternut

The fast, future-friendly minifier

Repository: https://github.com/Rich-Harris/butternut
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/butternut
Homepage: https://butternut.now.sh
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Archived: true
Last push: 2017-07-16T10:57:23+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3404, "days_push": 3335, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1163, forks 16 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:49.761297+00:00)

## What it is
Butternut is a fast JavaScript minifier that supports ES2015+ syntax, editing code in place via magic-string instead of AST regeneration. It offers a CLI (`squash`), a JavaScript API, and build-tool plugins for Rollup, webpack, and gulp.

## Use cases
- minify javascript bundles faster than uglifyjs
- compress es6/es2015 code
- squash js files from the command line
- integrate a minifier into rollup or webpack builds
- generate sourcemaps during minification

## When to choose
- you need very fast minification of modern ES2015+ JavaScript
- you want better compression than Babili without Uglify's speed penalty

## When to avoid
- you need a battle-tested, actively maintained minifier (project is alpha and unmaintained since 2017)
- you require maximum compression ratios
- production builds where correctness is critical without thorough testing

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: abandoned
- function: build-tool, compiler, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, web-development, frontend, performance
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: javascript-minifier, es2015, code-compression, sourcemaps, magic-string, nodejs

## Member repositories
- Rich-Harris/butternut (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:49.761297+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 2026-08-30T06:31:33.056541+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/Rich-Harris/butternut (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:49.761297+00:00, sha 1d2c431d1c09)
  - homepage: https://butternut.now.sh (fetched 2026-08-29T12:36:00.692720+00:00, sha 60f1bd295177)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/butternut (fetched 2026-08-29T12:36:00.702444+00:00, sha 0c9acfebf5b9)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.