Trust & definitions

How BuilderGraph measures developer activity.

BuilderGraph indexes public GitHub activity and maps repositories to crypto ecosystems using the Electric Capital crypto-ecosystems registry. The product is designed around observable activity: repositories, commits, snapshots, and committing identities.

What We Measure

BuilderGraph treats public development activity as the primary signal. The core metrics are active repositories, active committing identities, ecosystem-level trends, repo momentum, and period-over-period retention proxies.

Counts are derived from indexed public repositories and repository-contributor relationships. A contributor count means a distinct committing identity on valid indexed repositories; it is not a claim that BuilderGraph has resolved, enriched, or verified a real-world person.

Definitions

Repository

A public GitHub repository mapped to an ecosystem and present in the BuilderGraph index. Deleted or tombstoned repositories are excluded from live counts.

Contributor

A distinct committing identity observed in repository contributor data. This is an activity count, not an enriched person profile or contact record.

Active repository

A repository with recent public commit or push activity in the current trailing window used by the surface displaying the metric.

Momentum

Period-over-period movement in public repository activity such as stars, forks, commits, active repositories, and committing identities.

Retention proxy

A commit-authorship based comparison of identities present across adjacent periods. It is a proxy for builder retention, not resolved human retention.

Freshness

Public pages and API responses use the latest indexed data available to the application. Where a surface includes an "as of" or "indexed through" date, that date should be treated as the snapshot boundary for the displayed figures.

Published reports should cite their snapshot date so that later data refreshes do not silently change a quoted number.

Known Limits

Private repositories, private mirrors, and non-GitHub work are not visible.
Commit authorship can split one human across multiple identities or combine automated accounts with humans.
Bot and CI activity can inflate apparent activity unless filtered by downstream analysis.
Ecosystem mappings can lag new projects or include repositories whose ecosystem affiliation changes over time.
Contributor contact, employer, seniority, and social profile enrichment are not part of the public methodology.

What This Is Not

BuilderGraph is not selling contributor contact data, not scoring developer quality, and not presenting employer or identity resolution as a public product. Contact unlocks are disabled. Agent metered payments are not part of the active paid offer.