# TraceMachina/nativelink — health index 85/100 (Excellent)

> Inspection of the public repository TraceMachina/nativelink by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 85 out of 100, placing it in the Excellent 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/TraceMachina/nativelink
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/TraceMachina/nativelink
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/TraceMachina/nativelink/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/t/TraceMachina/nativelink.svg
- Inspected: 2026-07-22
- Methodology: metrics 1.13.0, report schema 0.26.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 22% | 99/100 | Excellent |
| Community & Adoption | 18% | 82/100 | Good |
| Sustainability & Governance | 24% | 77/100 | Good |
| Engineering Quality | 20% | 76/100 | Good |
| Security | 16% | 91/100 | Excellent |
| AI Readiness | not counted | 78/100 | Good |

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | NativeLink is a Nix-powered, open source, high-performance build cache and remote execution server, compatible with Bazel, Soong, Pants, Buck2, Reclient, and other RE-compatible build systems. It offers drastically faster builds, reduced test flakiness, and support for specialized hardware. |
| Homepage | https://nativelink.com |
| Primary language | Rust |
| Stars | 1,562 |
| Forks | 224 |
| Created | 2020-12-24 |
| Last push | 2026-07-22 |
| Latest release | v1.6.2 |
| Commits (last year) | 468 |
| Bus factor | 4 |
| Topics | apache2, bazel, build-automation, build-system, chromium, content-addressable-storage, remote-execution, rust, re-client, nix, buck2, free, simulation, ci, pants, soong |

## Vitality — 99/100 (Excellent)

Is the project alive — is code being written and are releases shipping? Weight: 22% of the overall index.

### Development activity — 99/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | met | 36 / 36 | last push 0 days ago |
| Commit cadence | partial | 35.3 / 36 | 51/52 weeks with commits |
| Commit volume | met | 18 / 18 | 468 commits in the last year |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Maintained | met | 10 / 10 | 30 commit(s) and 23 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |

### Release discipline — 99/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | met | 27 / 27 | 38 releases published |
| Release recency | met | 36 / 36 | latest release 4 days ago |
| Release cadence | met | 27 / 27 | a release every ~6.3 days |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases | partial | 9 / 10 | 4 out of the last 4 releases have a total of 7 signed artifacts. |

### Abandonment — 100/100 (Excellent)

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

## Community & Adoption — 82/100 (Good)

Does the project have users, downloads, attention, and a welcoming setup for contributors? Weight: 18% of the overall index.

### Popularity & adoption — 78/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | partial | 51.8 / 60 | 1,562 stars |
| Forks | partial | 19.6 / 25 | 224 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 7 / 15 | 19 watchers |

### Community health — 86/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 22.5 / 22.5 | — |
| License | partial | 16.9 / 22.5 | license file present, not a recognized license |
| 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 — 77/100 (Good)

Will the project survive its people — bus factor, responsiveness, who backs it, and package upkeep? Weight: 24% of the overall index.

### Maintainer resilience (bus factor) — 85/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 43.2 / 54 | 4 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 18.2 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 19% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 63 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 40 contributing companies or organizations |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 83/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | partial | 37.8 / 46.8 | 81% of issues closed |
| PR acceptance | partial | 30 / 38.2 | 1597/2039 decided PRs merged |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | met | 15 / 15 | all changesets reviewed |

### Ownership & stewardship — 60/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | met | 30 / 30 | organization-owned |
| Verified domain | not met | 0 / 20 | — |
| Owner reach | partial | 12.7 / 25 | 58 followers of TraceMachina |
| Track record | partial | 16.9 / 25 | 33 public repos, account ~2 yr old |

## Engineering Quality — 76/100 (Good)

Are baseline engineering and documentation practices in place? Weight: 20% of the overall index.

### Engineering practices — 84/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 19 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | met | 24 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | met | 16 / 16 | .golangci.yaml, biome.json |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | not met | 0 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | met | 20 / 20 | 30 out of 30 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |

### Documentation — 65/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 30 / 30 | — |
| Documentation directory | not met | 0 / 25 | — |
| Documentation / homepage site | met | 15 / 15 | https://nativelink.com |
| Repository description | met | 10 / 10 | — |
| Topics | met | 10 / 10 | 16 topics |
| Wiki | not met | 0 / 10 | — |

## Security — 91/100 (Excellent)

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 — 89/100 (Excellent)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Branch-Protection. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binary-Artifacts | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | no binaries found in the repo |
| Branch-Protection | excluded | 0 / 7.5 | internal error: error during branchesHandler.setup: internal error: some github tokens can't read classic branch protection rules: https://github.com/ossf/scorecard-action/blob/main/docs/authentication/fine-grained-auth-token.md |
| CI-Tests | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | 30 out of 30 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |
| CII-Best-Practices | partial | 1.2 / 2.5 | badge detected: Passing |
| Code-Review | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | all changesets reviewed |
| Contributors | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | project has 40 contributing companies or organizations |
| Dangerous-Workflow | met | 10 / 10 | no dangerous workflow patterns detected |
| Dependency-Update-Tool | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | update tool detected |
| Fuzzing | met | 5 / 5 | project is fuzzed |
| License | partial | 2.2 / 2.5 | license file detected |
| Maintained | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | 30 commit(s) and 23 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |
| Packaging | met | 5 / 5 | packaging workflow detected |
| Pinned-Dependencies | partial | 4.5 / 5 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 9 |
| SAST | met | 5 / 5 | SAST tool is run on all commits |
| Security-Policy | met | 5 / 5 | security policy file detected |
| Signed-Releases | partial | 6.8 / 7.5 | 4 out of the last 4 releases have a total of 7 signed artifacts. |
| Token-Permissions | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | GitHub workflow tokens follow principle of least privilege |
| Vulnerabilities | not met | 0 / 7.5 | 10 existing vulnerabilities detected |

### Dependency advisories — 100/100 (Excellent)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Indirect dependencies free of known advisories, No advisories left outstanding. Remaining weights renormalized. Matched 689 resolved dependencies against OSV; 134 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 | met | 35 / 35 | no direct dependency carries a known advisory |
| 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 | excluded | 0 / 40 | no advisory carries a publication date |

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

| 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 (Excellent)

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 — 78/100 (Good)

How well is the repo equipped to be developed and maintained with AI coding agents? An independent, experimental badge — weight 0.0, so it is surfaced on its own and does not affect the overall health score.

### Agent context & guidance — 40/100 (At risk)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent instructions | not met | 0 / 45 | no CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / editor rules |
| Machine-readable docs (llms.txt) | not met | 0 / 15 | — |
| Legible commit history | met | 40 / 40 | 86 of 90 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 99/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | met | 18 / 18 | integration_tests/buildstream/files/src/Makefile |
| Automated tests | met | 22 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | met | 11 / 11 | .golangci.yaml, biome.json |
| Static type checking | met | 11 / 11 | web/apps/docs/tsconfig.json, web/apps/web/tsconfig.json, web/packages/ui/tsconfig.json, web/tsconfig.json |
| Reproducible environment | met | 10 / 10 | Dockerfile, Nix, lockfile |
| Demonstrated agent practice | met | 10 / 10 | 8 of the last 100 commits agent-authored or agent-credited |
| Automated maintenance | met | 8 / 8 | 5 of the last 100 commits are automated dependency updates |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Pinned-Dependencies | partial | 9 / 10 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 9 |

### Code legibility for models — 97/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | met | 45 / 45 | Rust (statically typed) |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 52.1 / 55 | 17/327 source files over 60KB |

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| API schema (OpenAPI/GraphQL/proto) | met | 40 / 40 | nativelink-proto/build/bazel/remote/asset/v1/remote_asset.proto, nativelink-proto/build/bazel/remote/execution/v2/remote_execution.proto, nativelink-proto/build/bazel/semver/semver.proto, nativelink-proto/com/github/trace_machina/nativelink/remote_execution/events.proto, nativelink-proto/com/github/trace_machina/nativelink/remote_execution/worker_api.proto, nativelink-proto/google/api/annotations.proto, nativelink-proto/google/api/client.proto, nativelink-proto/google/api/field_behavior.proto, nativelink-proto/google/api/http.proto, nativelink-proto/google/bytestream/bytestream.proto, nativelink-proto/google/devtools/build/v1/build_events.proto, nativelink-proto/google/devtools/build/v1/build_status.proto, nativelink-proto/google/devtools/build/v1/publish_build_event.proto, nativelink-proto/google/longrunning/operations.proto, nativelink-proto/google/protobuf/any.proto, nativelink-proto/google/protobuf/descriptor.proto, nativelink-proto/google/protobuf/duration.proto, nativelink-proto/google/protobuf/empty.proto, nativelink-proto/google/protobuf/timestamp.proto, nativelink-proto/google/protobuf/wrappers.proto, nativelink-proto/google/rpc/error_details.proto, nativelink-proto/google/rpc/status.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/buildeventstream/proto/build_event_stream.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/java/com/google/devtools/build/lib/packages/metrics/package_load_metrics.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/protobuf/action_cache.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/protobuf/command_line.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/protobuf/failure_details.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/protobuf/invocation_policy.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/protobuf/option_filters.proto, nativelink-proto/src/main/protobuf/strategy_policy.proto |
| MCP server | not met | 0 / 20 | — |
| Runnable examples | met | 40 / 40 | examples |

## Collection warnings

- Star history unavailable: GitHub GraphQL error: Resource not accessible by personal access token
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-util' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-error' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-macro' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-proto' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-store' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-config' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-metric' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'generate-bazel-rc' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'generate-stores-config' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'nativelink-metric-macro-derive' from its registry

## 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