# NVIDIA/NVFlare — health index 96/100 (Exceptional)

> Inspection of the public repository NVIDIA/NVFlare by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 96 out of 100, placing it in the Exceptional band. The index is a signal derived from publicly visible practice, not a warranty, a security audit, or an endorsement, and it is independent of payment.

- Repository: https://github.com/NVIDIA/NVFlare
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/NVIDIA/NVFlare
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/NVIDIA/NVFlare/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/n/NVIDIA/NVFlare.svg
- Inspected: 2026-10-14
- Methodology: metrics 2.10.0, report schema 0.34.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 21% | 100/100 | Exceptional |
| Community & Adoption | 17% | 83/100 | Excellent |
| Sustainability & Governance | 23% | 91/100 | Excellent |
| Engineering Quality | 19% | 89/100 | Excellent |
| Security | 16% | 41/100 | Weak |
| AI Readiness | 4% | 94/100 | Exceptional |

The weighted overall 83 is calibrated to 96 on the published index scale (record calibration 2026-08-02).

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | NVIDIA Federated Learning Application Runtime Environment |
| Classification | cli, network-service |
| Homepage | https://nvidia.github.io/NVFlare/ |
| Primary language | Python |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Stars | 981 |
| Forks | 293 |
| Created | 2021-07-23 |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 |
| Latest release | 2.9.1rc2 |
| Commits (last year) | 951 |
| Bus factor | 4 |
| Topics | python, decentralized, federated-analytics, federated-learning, pet, privacy-protection, federated-computing |

## Vitality — 100/100 (Exceptional)

Is the project alive — is code being written and are releases shipping? Weight: 21% of the overall index.

### Development activity — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | met | 36 / 36 | last push 0 days ago |
| Commit cadence | met | 36 / 36 | 52/52 weeks with commits |
| Commit volume | met | 18 / 18 | 951 commits in the last year |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Maintained | excluded | 0 / 10 | OpenSSF Scorecard unavailable |

### Release discipline — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | met | 27 / 27 | 100 releases published |
| Release recency | met | 36 / 36 | latest release 0 days ago |
| Release cadence | met | 27 / 27 | a release every ~9.6 days |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases | excluded | 0 / 10 | OpenSSF Scorecard unavailable |

### Abandonment — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project is still maintained | met | 100 / 100 | last human commit 0 days ago |

## Community & Adoption — 83/100 (Excellent)

Does the project have users, downloads, attention, and a welcoming setup for contributors? Weight: 17% of the overall index.

### Popularity & adoption — 76/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | partial | 48.5 / 60 | 981 stars |
| Forks | partial | 20.5 / 25 | 293 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 6.7 / 15 | 17 watchers |

### Community health — 92/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 22.5 / 22.5 | — |
| License | met | 22.5 / 22.5 | recognized license (Apache-2.0) |
| CONTRIBUTING guide | met | 18 / 18 | — |
| Code of conduct | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | — |
| Issue template | not met | 0 / 7.2 | — |
| PR template | met | 6.3 / 6.3 | — |

## Sustainability & Governance — 91/100 (Excellent)

Will the project survive its people — bus factor, responsiveness, who backs it, and package upkeep? Weight: 23% of the overall index.

### Maintainer resilience (bus factor) — 82/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 43.2 / 54 | 4 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 17.3 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 23% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 73 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | excluded | 0 / 10 | OpenSSF Scorecard unavailable |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 94/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | partial | 40.2 / 42 | 96% of issues closed |
| PR acceptance | partial | 26.9 / 30 | 4243/4736 decided PRs merged |
| Newcomer PR acceptance | met | 13 / 13 | 8/8 first-time contributors' PRs merged in 30d |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | excluded | 0 / 15 | OpenSSF Scorecard unavailable |

### Ownership & stewardship — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | met | 30 / 30 | organization-owned |
| Verified domain | met | 20 / 20 | — |
| Owner reach | met | 25 / 25 | 31,336 followers of NVIDIA |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 816 public repos, account ~14 yr old |

## Engineering Quality — 89/100 (Excellent)

Are baseline engineering and documentation practices in place? Weight: 19% of the overall index.

### Engineering practices — 88/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 8 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | met | 24 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | met | 16 / 16 | .eslintrc.json, pyproject.toml ([tool.black], [tool.isort]), setup.cfg ([flake8]) |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | met | 6.4 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | excluded | 0 / 20 | OpenSSF Scorecard unavailable |

### Documentation — 90/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 30 / 30 | — |
| Documentation directory | met | 25 / 25 | — |
| Documentation / homepage site | met | 15 / 15 | https://nvidia.github.io/NVFlare/ |
| Repository description | met | 10 / 10 | — |
| Topics | met | 10 / 10 | 7 topics |
| Wiki | not met | 0 / 10 | — |

## Security — 41/100 (Weak)

Are visible security and supply-chain practices strong, with no malicious dependency and no unresolved high-risk jurisdiction exposure? Weight: 16% of the overall index.

### Security posture — 45/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Security policy (SECURITY.md) | not met | 0 / 30 | — |
| Dependabot config | not met | 0 / 25 | — |
| Dependency lockfiles | met | 25 / 25 | package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml |
| CodeQL workflow | met | 20 / 20 | — |

### Dependency advisories — 24/100 (At Risk)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Indirect dependencies free of known advisories. Remaining weights renormalized. Matched 1018 resolved dependencies against OSV; 87 could not be assessed (no resolved version, an unsupported ecosystem, or beyond the reported package list). This repository publishes no package the index resolves, so the repository dependency graph was assessed instead. That graph mixes development and test pins with shipped dependencies, so only the declared runtime dependencies are scored; transitive findings are reported as context and excluded from the score. Reachability is not analyzed.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct dependencies free of known advisories | partial | 3.5 / 35 | 10 affected: mlflow 3.10.1 (critical 9.3), aiohttp 3.13.4 (high 7.5), cryptography 46.0.7 (high 8.2), +7 more |
| Indirect dependencies free of known advisories | excluded | 0 / 25 | transitive set not separable from development and test dependencies in this scope |
| No advisories left outstanding | partial | 14.3 / 40 | 10 advisory-carrying package(s) unaddressed past 90 days; oldest published 583 days ago |

### Malicious dependencies — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| No dependency reported as a malicious package | met | 100 / 100 | no dependency is reported as a malicious package |

### High-Risk Jurisdiction Exposure — 100/100 (Exceptional)

Only high-confidence self-published location evidence affects this multiplier. Ambiguous matches are review-only; country evidence is not proof of nationality, citizenship, legal registration, malicious intent, or sanctions status.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy exposure multiplier | met | 100 / 100 | no confirmed policy-scope location match |

## AI Readiness — 94/100 (Exceptional)

How well is the repo equipped to be developed and maintained with AI coding agents? Carries a deliberately small weight: agent tooling is a real maintenance signal, but its absence must never gate the top of the scale (calibration saturates at raw 91, so 100/100 remains reachable with AI Readiness at zero).

### Agent context & guidance — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent instructions | met | 45 / 45 | AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, research/auto-fl-research/AGENTS.md, research/auto-fl-research/CLAUDE.md |
| Machine-readable docs (llms.txt) | met | 15 / 15 | llms.txt served by the project website (https://nvflare.readthedocs.io/llms.txt) |
| Legible commit history | met | 40 / 40 | 94 of 94 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | met | 18 / 18 | research/auto-fl-research/Makefile |
| Automated tests | met | 22 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | met | 11 / 11 | .eslintrc.json, pyproject.toml ([tool.black], [tool.isort]), setup.cfg ([flake8]) |
| Static type checking | met | 11 / 11 | examples/tutorials/self-paced-training/part-5_federated_learning_applications_in_industries/chapter-11_federated_learning_in_healthcare_lifescience/11.3_medical_devices/code/visualization/frontend/analytics-dashboard/tsconfig.json, web/tsconfig.json |
| Reproducible environment | met | 10 / 10 | Dockerfile, lockfile |
| Demonstrated agent practice | met | 10 / 10 | 7 of the last 100 commits agent-authored or agent-credited |
| Automated maintenance | met | 8 / 8 | 6 of the last 100 commits are automated dependency updates |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Pinned-Dependencies | excluded | 0 / 10 | OpenSSF Scorecard unavailable |

### Code legibility for models — 81/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | partial | 27 / 45 | Python with type-check config (examples/tutorials/self-paced-training/part-5_federated_learning_applications_in_industries/chapter-11_federated_learning_in_healthcare_lifescience/11.3_medical_devices/code/visualization/frontend/analytics-dashboard/tsconfig.json, web/tsconfig.json) |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 54.2 / 55 | 49/3254 source files over 60KB |

### Machine-readable interfaces — 80/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| API schema (OpenAPI/GraphQL/proto) | met | 40 / 40 | nvflare/app_opt/xgboost/histogram_based_v2/proto/federated.proto, nvflare/edge/web/service/edge_api.proto, nvflare/fuel/f3/drivers/grpc/streamer.proto |
| MCP server | not met | 0 / 20 | — |
| Runnable examples | met | 40 / 40 | example, examples, notebooks, recipes, sample |

## Collection warnings

- Star history unavailable: GitHub GraphQL error: Resource not accessible by personal access token
- Could not fetch pypi package 'fsi-examples' from its registry
- OpenSSF Scorecard did not return a usable result (killed by SIGKILL — most likely the container's memory limit; 2026/10/14 20:17:31 Warning: PATs stored in env variables GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN and GITHUB_TOKEN differ. Scorecard will use the former.); skipping Scorecard checks

## What this report is

inspect.software measures public repositories against a single published, versioned methodology and reports the result as a 1–100 health index. Findings are signals derived from what is visible in public repository data — they are not a security audit, a warranty, or an endorsement, and no result depends on payment.

- Methodology, formulas and weights: https://inspect.software/methodology.md
- What a result does and does not claim: https://inspect.software/wiki/signals-not-warranties.md
- Rating bands: https://inspect.software/wiki/scoring-bands.md
- Corrections: https://inspect.software/contact.md
- Index of all documents: https://inspect.software/llms.txt