# github-linguist/linguist

Language Savant. If your repository's language is being reported incorrectly, send us a pull request!

Repository: https://github.com/github-linguist/linguist
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/linguist
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: syntax-highlighting, language-grammars, language-statistics, linguistic
Last push: 2026-08-26T10:29:11+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 95/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 87, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5595, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 7, "gap_med": 80.5, "n_releases_24m": 9}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 13657, forks 5358 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:04.482443+00:00)

## What it is
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
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: parser, search-engine, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, programming-languages, version-control
- platform: ruby, cli, cross-platform
- tags: language-detection, syntax-highlighting, language-statistics, github, linguist

## Member repositories
- github-linguist/linguist (main) score 95

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:04.482443+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 2026-08-29T17:13:08.116842+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/github-linguist/linguist (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:04.482443+00:00, sha 44f6e752f8da)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.