github-linguist/linguist
Language Savant. If your repository's language is being reported incorrectly, send us a pull request! observed · 2026-10-15
Health v2 · maintenance only
93/100
- Activity 99
- Release rhythm 80
- 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: 81
- age_days: 5643
- days_rel: 55
- days_push: 6
- n_releases_24m: 8
Adoption not part of the score
13734 stars · 5487 forks observed · 2026-10-15
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded
Linguist is the Ruby library GitHub uses to detect file languages, ignore binary/vendored files, suppress generated files in diffs, and produce language breakdown statistics. It is available as a Ruby gem and a command-line tool for analyzing repositories or single files.
Use cases
- detect the programming language of a file or repository
- generate language breakdown statistics for a git repo
- fix incorrect language detection on github
- ignore vendored or generated files in diffs
- get language percentages for a codebase from the command line
When to choose
- you need accurate language detection for repositories or files
- you want to contribute language definitions or fix misdetection on GitHub
- you need language stats in a Ruby application
When to avoid
- you need syntax highlighting rendering itself rather than language identification
- you work outside Ruby and only need simple extension-based detection
Facets
library · maturity active
parser search-engine developer-tools developer-tools programming-languages version-control ruby cli cross-platform language-detection syntax-highlighting language-statistics github linguist
1 source
- readme: https://github.com/github-linguist/linguist · fetched 2026-10-15 · 44f6e752f8da
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| github-linguist/linguist | main | 93 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="github-linguist/linguist")
Data as of 2026-10-19T08:05:51.212177+00:00 · Report a problem