GitHub Rising Stars#

Discovers fast-growing GitHub repositories that haven't made the official Trending page yet, by querying the GitHub Search API across multiple dimensions and ranking by stars per day.

Quick Start#

Run the bundled script directly:

bash

python3 scripts/find_rising.py

Default: repos created in the last 3 days, min 20 stars, top 15 results.

Script Options#

text

python3 scripts/find_rising.py [options]

--days N        Look-back window in days (default: 3, range: 1-7)
--min-stars N   Minimum star count threshold (default: 20)
--top N         Number of results to return (default: 15)
--lang LANG     Filter by programming language (e.g. Python, TypeScript, Go)
--json          Output machine-readable JSON

Examples#

bash

# Find Python repos rising fast in the last 5 days
python3 scripts/find_rising.py --days 5 --lang Python

# Find top 20 repos with at least 50 stars
python3 scripts/find_rising.py --min-stars 50 --top 20

# JSON output for further processing
python3 scripts/find_rising.py --json

How It Works#

1. Multi-query search — runs 3 GitHub API queries with overlapping time/star ranges to maximize coverage
2. Deduplication — merges results by repo ID
3. Spam filtering — removes known low-quality signals (crypto bots, game hacks, follower farms, etc.)
4. Rate calculation — computes stars / age_in_days for each repo
5. Ranked output — sorts by rate descending, shows top N

Interpreting Results#

• Rate > 200/day: Viral — likely hits Trending within 24h
• Rate 50–200/day: Fast-rising — worth watching
• Rate < 50/day: Early signal — may accelerate

Repos with no description or no language tag may be spam or private mirrors — apply extra scrutiny.

Agent Workflow#

When a user asks to find rising repos:

1. Run python3 scripts/find_rising.py with appropriate flags
2. Present results in a clean table, grouped by theme/category if patterns emerge
3. Highlight repos worth deeper investigation (high rate + meaningful description + known author)
4. Optionally open top repos in browser for quick review

Limitations#

• GitHub Search API is unauthenticated by default — rate limit: 10 requests/min. Add a Authorization: token <PAT> header in the script for higher limits.
• Results reflect repos created recently; established repos that suddenly spike are not captured (use pushed filter variant for that).
• Stars can be artificially inflated; cross-reference with Hacker News / Reddit for validation.