Discussion
user3939382: At a glance this may read as “most of this code isn’t valuable to others” but reality is probably complected with “this type of code is reducing the need for shared libraries”.
furyofantares: 100% of all code I have put on github, using claude or not, is on repos with zero stars.
Aurornis: Perfect example of a base rate fallacy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacyWhat percentage of GitHub activity goes to GitHub repos with less than 2 stars? I would guess it's close to the same number.
levocardia: My reaction as well -- I have a few dozen public repos of 100% human-written code, most are 0 stars!
chrisweekly: Even if that stat were compared directly to the base rate (human output), it could easily be explained by correlating strongly with Claude usage skewing towards new repos.
dev_l1x_be: Did we democratise software engineering? Seriously, I created a bunch of tools that I find useful without the bloated framework issues that are present in software nowadays. Jokes on me if something does not work.
nickcw: The first thing I do when I make a new repo is star it myself ;-)
anon7000: The HN headline is at least misleading, because I suspect a majority of Claude usage is at the enterprise level (deep pockets), which goes to private GitHub repos.
louiereederson: Toggling the stars shows 50b lines of code created across all projects, only 5b on projects with 2+ stars since Claude Code launch. Kind of eye opening where these Claude Code tokens are going.Came across this from this ShowHN post yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47501348
phantomCupcake: Thanks for starting the conversation and sharing my dashboard. :)
throwaway27448: Do people really put weight in stars? It seems completely unrelated to anything but, well, popularity. Even when I modify other peoples' code I fork to a private repo and maintain my changes separately, and I'm fairly certain I have never starred a repo.
embedding-shape: I'd betcha a lot more than 90% goes to repositories without any stars at all, or even public code!
phantomCupcake: Absolutely! I think the real stats will far exceed what we can see on public GitHub. That said, going through some of the top "performers" by commit and line count - I am surprised by how many people have all their code in public repos.
zadikian: I've seen people "buy" stars enough to not care about them
ramoz: Shout out to Broadwayscore by thomaspryor@githubNearly a 1GB repo, 24M loc, 52K commitshttps://github.com/thomaspryor/BroadwayscorePolished site:https://broadwayscorecard.com/
thorum: Stars have been useless as signals for project quality for a while. They’re mostly bought, at this point. I regularly see obviously vibe-coded nonsense projects on GitHub’s Trending page with 10,000 stars. I don’t believe 10,000 people have even cloned the repo, much less gotten any personal value from it. It’s meaningless.
tlogan: The actual number is that 98% have less than 2 stars (0 or 1). About 90.25% has zero stars.
wetoastfood: How do you know that?
robarr: For example, it's used as a kind of internal bookmarking system. I don't necessarily star a repo because I think it has good code, but maybe a good idea or something related to something I'm interested in developing.
tlogan: https://ghe.clickhouse.tech/
madrox: Already enough comments about base rate fallacy, so instead I'll say I'm worried for the future of GitHub.Its business is underpinned by pre-AI assumptions about usage that, based on its recent instability, I suspect is being invalidated by surges in AI-produced code and commits.I'm worried, at some point, they'll be forced to take an unpopular stance and either restrict free usage tiers or restrict AI somehow. I'm unsure how they'll evolve.
hungryhobbit: Or they'll just keep forcing policies that let them steal the code you post on GitHub (for their AI training), and make everyone leave that way.
mjr00: I was really confused how this could be possible for such a seemingly simple site but it looks like it's storing + writing many new commits every time there's a new review, or new financial data, or a new show, etc.Someone might want to tell the author to ask Claude what a database is typically used for...
phantomCupcake: This.But also, GitHub profiles and repos were at one point a window into specific developers - like a social site for coders. Now it's suffering from the same problem that social media sites suffer from - AI-slop and unreliable signals about developers. Maybe that doesn't matter so much if writing code isn't as valuable anymore.
theteapot: Why is this interesting?
ttul: Yeah. Most of my public repos have 0 stars. Most of what I write sucks.
Joel_Mckay: Yeah, but knowing something sucks means you are probably reasonably competent at coding. =3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
hk1337: How long does it normally take projects to get stars though? You're not going to have a project with 100+ stars overnight or even within a month, you have to promote the project?
JanisErdmanis: Depends widely on the target audience. In my case, targeting Julia developers who want to package their applications into installers to reach 100 stars took 2 years - https://peacefounder.org/AppBundler.jl. If I were to target Python developers, I would have many more stars.
louiereederson: I hope you don't mind, I thought this was a really valuable dashboard.
phantomCupcake: Not at all! The ShowHN didn't really get a lot of feedback but this thread has already given me a lot to think about adding/improving.
louiereederson: The instability is related to their Azure migration isn't it? Cynically you could say it hasn't been helped by the rolling RIFs at Microsoft
madeofpalk: Does anyone actually know? So far I've just seen people guessing, and seeing that repeated.
Bratmon: Wait, you just answered a completely different question and pretended it was relevant!I can play that game too: The average elephant eats 500 pounds of vegetation a day, therefore most AI interaction on Github is fake.
monster_truck: I cannot understate how much of an improvement that is. If I had a dollar for all the shit I made myself, the old fashioned way, that got 0 attention at all? I'd have enough for a month or two of claude
sleepybrett: I have a few dozen org repos, of course none of them have stars, who stars their corporate repos?
seba_dos1: Isn't the only purpose of these stars marking which GitHub mirrors of projects hosted elsewhere should count to the contribution mosaic on your profile?...
bredren: Some of the comments point toward genuine concern, some smell of gatekeeping.It is interesting to see a flip in attitude toward GitHub.
adhipg: Isn't that expected as well?The idea with Claude writing code for most part is that everyone can write software that they need. Software for the audience of one. GitHub is just a place for them to live beyond my computer.Why will I want to promote it or get stars?
petcat: In a (possibly near) future where most new code is generated by AI bots, the code itself becomes incidental/commodotized and it's nothing more than and intermediate representation (IR) of whatever solution it was prompt-engineered to produce. The value will come from the proposals, reviews, and specifications that caused that code to be produced.Github is still code-centric with issues and discussions being auxilliary/supporting features around the code. At some point those will become the frontline features, and the code will become secondary.
largbae: What percentage of non-Claude-linked output hours to repos with <2 stars?
philipp-gayret: Having managed GitHub enterprises for thousands of developers who will ping you at the first sign of instability.. I can tell you there has not been one year pre-AI where GitHub was fully "stable" for a month or maybe even a week, and except for that one time with Cocoapods that downtime has always been their own doing.
progmetaldev: I keep hearing this, and I know Azure has had some issues recently, but I rarely have an issue with Azure like I do with GitHub. I have close to 100 websites on Azure, running on .NET, mostly on Azure App Service (some on Windows 2016 VMs). These sites don't see the type of traffic or amount of features that GitHub has, but if we're talking about Azure being the issue, I'm wondering if I just don't see this because there aren't enough people dependent on these sites compared to GitHub?Or instead, is it mistakes being made migrating to Azure, rather than Azure being the actual problem? Changing providers can be difficult, especially if you relied on any proprietary services from the old provider.
ekjhgkejhgk: Fuck GitHub. It's a corporate attempt at owning git by sprinkling socials on top. I hope it fails.If you need to host git + a nice gui (as opposed to needing to promote your shit) Forgejo is free software.
heliumtera: Software production yes engineering no lol
sy26: embarrassing
jostmey: Claude is only as good as the prompts it’s given
racl101: +1 star for ttul
louiereederson: True it is a bit of a sensationalist title, but the implication is probably directionally right, and at the very least raises further questions.Check out the largest projects by commits and LOC. These are huge projects, and for the most part they have 0 stars, 0 people watching and 0 forks. You'd think for that level of output these signals (however weak) would show some traction. Someone pointed to the Broadway ratings aggregator with 24m lines of code earlier - there seem to be a bunch of examples like this. The 11m line me_theory_simulation repo by lizthedeveloper of the multiverse school is also interesting.All of this together potentially paints a picture that the spike in Claude usage is tied to low attention but high LOC repos. This is fine, but it also means Claude Code usage might overstate the sustainable technological/economic impact that is occurring as a result of the product today. Also leads to question on sustainability of Claude Code usage given this stuff costs real money.
strongly-typed: Doesn’t matter if the recruiter doesn’t call you back because you’re not a 1000x engineer.
