# paper-trail-gem/paper_trail

Track changes to your rails models

Repository: https://github.com/paper-trail-gem/paper_trail
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/paper_trail
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: ruby, activerecord, audit, log, rails
Last push: 2026-05-08T14:55:46+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 59/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 81, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 6307, "days_push": 117, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 7032, forks 908 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:55.073141+00:00)

## What it is
PaperTrail is a Ruby gem that tracks changes to Rails ActiveRecord models, recording every create, update, and destroy as versioned snapshots. It lets you audit model history, view a model at any past point, revert to any version, and restore destroyed records.

## Use cases
- audit changes to rails models
- track who changed a record and when
- revert a model to a previous version
- restore a deleted record
- view how a model looked at any point in time
- diff versions of a model over its lifecycle

## When to choose
- you need an audit log or version history for Rails ActiveRecord models
- you want undo/rollback and undelete capabilities for records
- you need to record which user made each change

## When to avoid
- you are not using Ruby on Rails or ActiveRecord
- you need full database-level auditing rather than model-level versioning
- you only need simple timestamps without version history

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: logging, orm, middleware
- domain: databases, developer-tools, web-development, backend
- platform: ruby, jvm
- tags: audit-trail, versioning, activerecord, rails, undo, soft-delete-restore

## Member repositories
- paper-trail-gem/paper_trail (main) score 59

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:55.073141+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 2026-08-29T17:40:34.942151+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/paper-trail-gem/paper_trail (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:55.073141+00:00, sha 27fce6dac084)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.