paulmillr/chokidar
Some data may be outdated — see provenance labels.
Minimal and efficient cross-platform file watching library observed · 2026-09-24
Health v2 · maintenance only
70/100
- Activity 90
- Release rhythm 27
- Longevity 100
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-10-21. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: 172.0
- age_days: 5296
- days_rel: 329
- days_push: 65
- n_releases_24m: 3
Adoption not part of the score
12243 stars · 635 forks observed · 2026-09-24
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
Chokidar is a minimal and efficient cross-platform file watching library for Node.js. It normalizes raw fs.watch/fs.watchFile events into reliable add/change/unlink events, supporting atomic writes, chunked writes, filtering, symlinks, and recursive watching.
Use cases
- watch files and directories for changes in nodejs
- trigger build tasks when source files change
- detect when files are added or deleted in a folder
- watch config files and reload on change
- monitor log files for new content
- normalize inconsistent fs.watch events across macos linux and windows
When to choose
- you need reliable cross-platform file change events in Node.js
- raw fs.watch gives duplicate or useless rename events
- you need recursive watching, symlink support, or atomic write handling
- you want a battle-tested library used in millions of repositories
When to avoid
- you need glob-based watch patterns (removed in v4)
- you are on Node.js older than v20 (v5 is ESM-only)
- you need file watching outside the Node.js runtime
- you only need simple polling and want zero dependencies
Facets
library · maturity stable
file-system developer-tools developer-tools files cross-platform cross-platform file-watching fsevents watcher esm npm nodejs
3 sources
- readme: https://github.com/paulmillr/chokidar · fetched 2026-09-24 · 7a40fa33ddf6
- homepage: https://paulmillr.com · fetched 2026-08-29 · 83a0dd5ec1a8
- registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/chokidar · fetched 2026-08-29 · 87611a15141e
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| paulmillr/chokidar | main | 70 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="paulmillr/chokidar")
Data as of 2026-10-19T08:05:51.212177+00:00 · Report a problem