# sharkdp/insect

High precision scientific calculator with support for physical units

Repository: https://github.com/sharkdp/insect
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/insect
Homepage: https://numbat.dev/
Language: PureScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: calculator, web-app, terminal-based, mathematical-expressions, physics, quantities, units, parser, purescript
Archived: true
Last push: 2025-02-10T20:25:49+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 6, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3476, "days_push": 569, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3168, forks 128 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:47.329842+00:00)

## What it is
Insect is a high-precision scientific calculator with full support for physical units, available both as a terminal application and a browser-based web app. It evaluates mathematical expressions with 30 significant digits, handles unit parsing and implicit/explicit conversions, and supports variable assignments. The README recommends its successor, Numbat, a Rust rewrite.

## Use cases
- convert units in calculations like 60 mph -> m/s
- compute physics problems with quantities like 40 kg * 9.8 m/s^2
- high precision arithmetic with 30 significant digits
- quick scientific calculations in the terminal
- calculate with mixed units like 2 min + 30 s
- share calculations via a browser URL

## When to avoid
- you are starting a new setup - the author recommends the successor project Numbat instead
- you need a full programmable scientific computing language rather than an interactive calculator
- you need graphing or symbolic algebra capabilities

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: maintenance
- function: parser, cli, developer-tools
- domain: mathematics, web-development, education
- platform: cli, browser, cross-platform
- tags: scientific-calculator, physical-units, unit-conversion, purescript, terminal-app, web-app, high-precision-arithmetic, superseded-by-numbat, physics, command-line, web-server

## Member repositories
- sharkdp/insect (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:47.329842+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 2026-08-30T07:25:09.216070+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/sharkdp/insect (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:47.329842+00:00, sha 3e471973d1f4)
  - homepage: https://numbat.dev/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:39:46.514578+00:00, sha 5cc02a7b04d5)
  - site_page: https://numbat.dev/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T09:39:46.517133+00:00, sha 700434a555ef)
  - site_page: https://numbat.dev/docs/examples/example-numbat_syntax (fetched 2026-08-29T09:39:46.519029+00:00, sha 18653d662426)
  - site_page: https://numbat.dev/docs/web/usage (fetched 2026-08-29T09:39:46.521283+00:00, sha bad4ad987dc8)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.