# chef/chef — health index 82/100 (Good)

> Inspection of the public repository chef/chef by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 82 out of 100, placing it in the Good 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/chef/chef
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/chef/chef
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/chef/chef/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/c/chef/chef.svg
- Inspected: 2026-07-21
- Methodology: metrics 1.13.0, report schema 0.26.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 22% | 74/100 | Good |
| Community & Adoption | 18% | 100/100 | Excellent |
| Sustainability & Governance | 24% | 82/100 | Good |
| Engineering Quality | 20% | 94/100 | Excellent |
| Security | 16% | 57/100 | Moderate |
| AI Readiness | not counted | 63/100 | Moderate |

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Chef Infra, a powerful automation platform that transforms infrastructure into code automating how infrastructure is configured, deployed and managed across any environment, at any scale |
| Homepage | http://www.chef.io/chef/ |
| Primary language | Ruby |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Stars | 8,220 |
| Forks | 2,523 |
| Created | 2009-01-15 |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 |
| Latest release | v15.8.23 |
| Commits (last year) | 733 |
| Bus factor | 4 |
| Topics | chef, devops, cfgmgt, infrastructure, automation, deployment, hacktoberfest |

## Published packages

| Registry | Package | Latest | Monthly downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| rubygems | chef | 19.3.15 | — |
| rubygems | chef-bin | 19.3.15 | — |
| rubygems | chef-utils | 19.3.15 | — |
| rubygems | chef-config | 19.3.15 | — |

## Vitality — 74/100 (Good)

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 | 733 commits in the last year |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Maintained | met | 10 / 10 | 30 commit(s) and 1 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |

### Release discipline — 36/100 (At risk)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | met | 27 / 27 | 4 releases published |
| Release recency | not met | 0 / 36 | latest release 2343 days ago |
| Release cadence | partial | 5.4 / 27 | a release every ~586.5 days |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases | excluded | 0 / 10 | no releases found |

### Abandonment — 100/100 (Excellent)

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

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

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

### Popularity & adoption — 99/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | met | 60 / 60 | 8,220 stars |
| Forks | met | 25 / 25 | 2,523 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 14.1 / 15 | 351 watchers |

### Community health — 100/100 (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 | met | 7.2 / 7.2 | — |
| PR template | met | 6.3 / 6.3 | — |

### Ecosystem adoption (downloads) — 100/100 (Excellent)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Registry dependents. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total downloads | met | 80 / 80 | 138,992,938 downloads all-time across rubygems |
| Registry dependents | excluded | 0 / 20 | not reported by this ecosystem |

## Sustainability & Governance — 82/100 (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) — 84/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 43.2 / 54 | 4 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 17.6 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 22% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 98 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 33 contributing companies or organizations |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 74/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | partial | 42.8 / 46.8 | 92% of issues closed |
| PR acceptance | partial | 25.4 / 38.2 | 8187/12334 decided PRs merged |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | partial | 6 / 15 | Found 11/25 approved changesets -- score normalized to 4 |

### Ownership & stewardship — 74/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | met | 30 / 30 | organization-owned |
| Verified domain | not met | 0 / 20 | — |
| Owner reach | partial | 18.7 / 25 | 401 followers of chef |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 203 public repos, account ~17 yr old |

### Package maintenance — 100/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published & resolvable | met | 25 / 25 | 4 package(s) on rubygems |
| Publish recency | met | 35 / 35 | latest publish 60 days ago |
| Version history | met | 20 / 20 | 659 published versions |
| Not deprecated | met | 20 / 20 | active, not deprecated or yanked |

## Engineering Quality — 94/100 (Excellent)

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

### Engineering practices — 90/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 18 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | met | 24 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | met | 16 / 16 | .rubocop.yml |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | met | 6.4 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | met | 20 / 20 | 16 out of 16 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |

### Documentation — 100/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 30 / 30 | — |
| Documentation directory | met | 25 / 25 | — |
| Documentation / homepage site | met | 15 / 15 | http://www.chef.io/chef/ |
| Repository description | met | 10 / 10 | — |
| Topics | met | 10 / 10 | 7 topics |
| Wiki | met | 10 / 10 | — |

## Security — 57/100 (Moderate)

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 — 46/100 (At risk)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Packaging, Signed-Releases. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binary-Artifacts | not met | 0 / 7.5 | binaries present in source code |
| Branch-Protection | partial | 0.8 / 7.5 | branch protection is not maximal on development and all release branches |
| CI-Tests | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | 16 out of 16 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |
| CII-Best-Practices | not met | 0 / 2.5 | no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected |
| Code-Review | partial | 3 / 7.5 | Found 11/25 approved changesets -- score normalized to 4 |
| Contributors | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | project has 33 contributing companies or organizations |
| Dangerous-Workflow | not met | 0 / 10 | dangerous workflow patterns detected |
| Dependency-Update-Tool | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | update tool detected |
| Fuzzing | not met | 0 / 5 | project is not fuzzed |
| License | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | license file detected |
| Maintained | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | 30 commit(s) and 1 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |
| Packaging | excluded | 0 / 5 | packaging workflow not detected |
| Pinned-Dependencies | not met | 0 / 5 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 0 |
| SAST | partial | 3.5 / 5 | SAST tool is not run on all commits -- score normalized to 7 |
| Security-Policy | met | 5 / 5 | security policy file detected |
| Signed-Releases | excluded | 0 / 7.5 | no releases found |
| Token-Permissions | not met | 0 / 7.5 | detected GitHub workflow tokens with excessive permissions |
| Vulnerabilities | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | 0 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 278 resolved dependencies against OSV; 55 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 — 63/100 (Moderate)

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 — 70/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent instructions | met | 45 / 45 | .github/copilot-instructions.md |
| Machine-readable docs (llms.txt) | not met | 0 / 15 | — |
| Legible commit history | partial | 24.8 / 40 | 41 of 88 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 61/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | not met | 0 / 18 | — |
| Automated tests | met | 22 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | met | 11 / 11 | .rubocop.yml |
| Static type checking | not met | 0 / 11 | — |
| Reproducible environment | met | 10 / 10 | Dockerfile, lockfile |
| Demonstrated agent practice | met | 10 / 10 | 9 of the last 100 commits agent-authored or agent-credited |
| Automated maintenance | met | 8 / 8 | 12 of the last 100 commits are automated dependency updates |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Pinned-Dependencies | not met | 0 / 10 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 0 |

### Code legibility for models — 55/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | not met | 0 / 45 | Ruby without a type-check config |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 54.9 / 55 | 4/1801 source files over 60KB |

### Machine-readable interfaces — 60/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| API schema (OpenAPI/GraphQL/proto) | not met | 0 / 40 | — |
| MCP server | met | 20 / 20 | — |
| Runnable examples | met | 40 / 40 | cookbook, recipes |

## 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