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github-linguist/linguist

Language Savant. If your repository's language is being reported incorrectly, send us a pull request! observed · 2026-08-28

github.com/github-linguist/linguist · Ruby · MIT (permissive) observed · 2026-08-28

Health v2 · maintenance only

95/100

  • Activity 99
  • Release rhythm 87
  • Longevity 100
How is this computed?

round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.

  • gap_med: 80.5
  • age_days: 5595
  • days_rel: 7
  • days_push: 7
  • n_releases_24m: 9

Full methodology

Adoption not part of the score

13657 stars · 5358 forks observed · 2026-08-28

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

Member repositories

RepositoryRoleHealth v2
github-linguist/linguistmain95

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="github-linguist/linguist")

Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem