# dbreunig/whenwords

A relative time formatting library, with no code.

Repository: https://github.com/dbreunig/whenwords
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/whenwords
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-01-20T17:09:49+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 44/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 63, release rhythm 35, longevity 16
- inputs: {"age_days": 237, "days_push": 225, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1312, forks 81 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:20.196995+00:00)

## What it is
whenwords is a relative time formatting library that ships only a specification (SPEC.md), language-agnostic test cases (tests.yaml), and install instructions—no implementation code. Developers generate the actual library in their language of choice (Ruby, Python, Rust, Elixir, Swift, PHP, Bash, etc.) by pasting a prompt into an AI coding assistant and iterating until all spec tests pass.

## Use cases
- format timestamps as '3 hours ago' style relative strings
- parse human duration strings like '2h 30m' into seconds
- format seconds as readable durations like '2 hours, 30 minutes'
- show contextual dates like 'Today', 'Yesterday', or 'Last Tuesday'
- collapse date ranges into smart strings like 'March 5–7, 2024'
- generate a time formatting library in any language via AI coding tools

## When to choose
- you need consistent relative-time formatting across multiple languages from one spec
- you want a small, AI-generated utility library you can regenerate and verify against shared tests
- you prefer spec-and-tests artifacts over vendored dependencies

## When to avoid
- you need a battle-tested, maintained implementation with a real maintainer fixing bugs
- you cannot or do not want to use AI coding assistants to generate code
- you need extensive locale/internationalization support beyond the spec

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: date-time
- domain: developer-tools, programming-languages
- platform: cross-platform, python, rust, ruby, php, elixir
- tags: spec-only, no-code, ai-generated-code, language-agnostic, relative-time, human-readable-dates, test-driven-spec, localization, swift

## Member repositories
- dbreunig/whenwords (main) score 44

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:20.196995+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 2026-08-30T04:49:01.900103+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dbreunig/whenwords (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:20.196995+00:00, sha 8616b007262a)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.