# vmihailenco/msgpack

msgpack.org[Go] MessagePack encoding for Golang

Repository: https://github.com/vmihailenco/msgpack
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/vmihailenco-msgpack
Homepage: https://msgpack.uptrace.dev/
Language: Go
License: BSD-2-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: go, golang, encoding, msgpack, serialization
Last push: 2024-06-04T10:05:14+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5058, "days_push": 820, "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 2673, forks 255 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:09.603898+00:00)

## What it is
A MessagePack encoding library for Go, providing fast binary serialization as a drop-in replacement for encoding/. It supports structs, maps, custom encoders/decoders, extensions, and struct tag customization.

## Use cases
- serialize Go structs to a compact binary format
- replace encoding/ with a faster serializer
- encode and decode MessagePack messages in Go
- marshal time.Time and interface{} values to binary
- customize field names and omit empty fields when encoding
- encode type information with MessagePack extensions

## When to choose
- you need fast, compact binary serialization in Go
- you want a JSON-like API but with better performance and smaller payloads
- you need custom encoding logic or type-aware extensions
- you want struct tag control similar to encoding/

## When to avoid
- you need human-readable output
- you are not working in Go
- you need cross-language schemas with strict versioning (consider protobuf)

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: serialization
- domain: developer-tools, backend
- platform: go, cross-platform
- tags: msgpack, encoding, golang, binary-format, -alternative, data-engineering

## Member repositories
- vmihailenco/msgpack (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:09.603898+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 2026-08-30T02:18:06.134672+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/vmihailenco/msgpack (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:09.603898+00:00, sha a320ff8492a9)
  - homepage: https://msgpack.uptrace.dev/ (fetched 2026-08-29T10:00:36.001882+00:00, sha 7c78258c2b6a)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.