# Developer program

> The inspect.software developer program — free inspection for maintainers' own repositories, whatever their download count. Membership is by code.


Free inspection is allocated by public value: a repository crosses the
threshold on [stars or forks](/faq), 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](/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](/about).

## 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](mailto: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](/pricing) instead.