Free inspection is allocated by public value: a repository crosses the threshold on stars or forks, because that is a signal the wider public depends on it. It is a defensible rule, and it is also a blunt one. It cannot see the library with four hundred stars that a dozen build systems quietly rely on, or the tool that has been maintained carefully for eight years by one person and is used by everyone in its niche.
The developer program exists for that gap.
What membership grants
- Free inspection of the member's own repositories, whatever the public thresholds say. Membership applies to repositories the member owns or maintains on GitHub — verified against GitHub, not asserted.
- A profile badge recording membership and the date it began.
Membership does not affect results. A member's repository is measured against the same versioned methodology as every other, and the health index it earns is the index it is published with. Nothing about a scan is for sale — see independence.
Who it is for
Maintainers of open-source software that matters more than its star count suggests: infrastructure libraries, build and release tooling, language bindings, long-lived niche projects, and the dependencies of dependencies.
Joining
Membership is granted by code. Codes are issued directly — to maintainers of projects already in the public record, to contributors, and to participants in work the institution takes part in.
A code is redeemed once per account. Redeeming it enrolls the account and activates the badge immediately.
To request a code, write to developers@inspect.software with the repositories in question. Repositories that already meet the public thresholds need no code: they can be submitted directly, free, by anyone.
Private repositories and commissioned reviews follow the documented certification route instead.