# dtolnay/serde — health index 33/100 (At Risk)

> Inspection of the public repository dtolnay/serde by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 33 out of 100, placing it in the At Risk 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/dtolnay/serde
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/dtolnay/serde
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/dtolnay/serde/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/d/dtolnay/serde.svg
- Inspected: 2026-07-31
- Methodology: metrics 2.3.1, report schema 0.27.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 21% | 37/100 | Weak |
| Community & Adoption | 17% | 21/100 | At Risk |
| Sustainability & Governance | 23% | 40/100 | Weak |
| Engineering Quality | 19% | 42/100 | Weak |
| Security | 16% | 48/100 | Weak |
| AI Readiness | 4% | 45/100 | Weak |

The weighted overall 38 is calibrated to 33 on the published index scale (record calibration 2026-08-02).

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Serialization framework for Rust |
| Homepage | https://serde.rs/ |
| Primary language | Rust |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Stars | 14 |
| Forks | 1 |
| Created | 2020-05-06 |
| Last push | 2026-07-18 |
| Latest release | v1.0.106 |
| Commits (last year) | 0 |
| Bus factor | 1 |
| Fork | yes |

## Published packages

| Registry | Package | Latest | Monthly downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| crates | serde | 1.0.229 | 83,916,627 |
| crates | serde_test | 1.0.177 | 1,563,340 |
| crates | serde_derive | 1.0.229 | 81,357,939 |
| crates | serde_derive_internals | 0.30.0 | 15,884,479 |

## Vitality — 37/100 (Weak)

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

### Development activity — 29/100 (At Risk)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | partial | 28.8 / 36 | last push 12 days ago |
| Commit cadence | not met | 0 / 36 | 0/52 weeks with commits |
| Commit volume | not met | 0 / 18 | 0 commits in the last year |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Maintained | not met | 0 / 10 | 0 commit(s) and 0 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 0 |

### Release discipline — 48/100 (Weak)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | partial | 16.2 / 27 | 100 version tags (no GitHub releases) |
| Release recency | not met | 0 / 36 | latest release 2309 days ago |
| Release cadence | met | 27 / 27 | a release every ~29 days |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases | excluded | 0 / 10 | no releases found |

### Abandonment — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project is still maintained | met | 100 / 100 | no human commit for 1561 days, with nothing left unanswered; held at dormant by nothing open to answer, no affected dependency |

## Community & Adoption — 21/100 (At Risk)

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

### Popularity & adoption — 18/100 (Critical)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | partial | 18.1 / 60 | 14 stars |
| Forks | not met | 0 / 25 | 1 forks |
| Watchers | not met | 0 / 15 | 1 watchers |

### Community health — 25/100 (At Risk)

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

## Sustainability & Governance — 40/100 (Weak)

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) — 42/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 9 / 54 | 1 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 9 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 60% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 100 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 46 contributing companies or organizations |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 1/100 (Critical)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Issue resolution, PR acceptance, Newcomer PR acceptance. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | excluded | 0 / 42 | no issues or no data |
| PR acceptance | excluded | 0 / 30 | no decided pull requests or no data |
| Newcomer PR acceptance | excluded | 0 / 13 | no first-time contributor's PR decided in 30d |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | not met | 0 / 15 | Found 0/30 approved changesets -- score normalized to 0 |

### Ownership & stewardship — 75/100 (Good)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Verified domain. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | partial | 10 / 30 | personal (user) account |
| Verified domain | excluded | 0 / 20 | not applicable to user accounts |
| Owner reach | met | 25 / 25 | 9,513 followers of dtolnay |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 121 public repos, account ~14 yr old |

## Engineering Quality — 42/100 (Weak)

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

### Engineering practices — 60/100 (Moderate)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 1 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | met | 24 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | not met | 0 / 16 | — |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | not met | 0 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | excluded | 0 / 20 | no pull request found |

### Documentation — 15/100 (Critical)

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

## Security — 48/100 (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 — 35/100 (Weak)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binary-Artifacts | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | no binaries found in the repo |
| Branch-Protection | not met | 0 / 7.5 | branch protection not enabled on development/release branches |
| CI-Tests | excluded | 0 / 2.5 | no pull request found |
| CII-Best-Practices | not met | 0 / 2.5 | no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected |
| Code-Review | not met | 0 / 7.5 | Found 0/30 approved changesets -- score normalized to 0 |
| Contributors | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | project has 46 contributing companies or organizations |
| Dangerous-Workflow | met | 10 / 10 | no dangerous workflow patterns detected |
| Dependency-Update-Tool | not met | 0 / 7.5 | no update tool detected |
| Fuzzing | not met | 0 / 5 | project is not fuzzed |
| License | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | license file detected |
| Maintained | not met | 0 / 7.5 | 0 commit(s) and 0 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 0 |
| 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 | not met | 0 / 5 | no SAST tool detected |
| Security-Policy | partial | 1.5 / 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 (Exceptional)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Indirect dependencies free of known advisories, No advisories left outstanding. Remaining weights renormalized. Matched 2 resolved dependencies against OSV; 10 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 (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. 1 match(es) from contributors below the commit-weight threshold (fewer than 50 commits and under 10% of sampled commits) are recorded for review and do not affect the score.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy exposure multiplier | met | 100 / 100 | no confirmed policy-scope location match; 1 match(es) below the commit-weight threshold (<50 commits and <10% of commits), review-only |

## AI Readiness — 45/100 (Weak)

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 — 16/100 (Critical)

| 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 | partial | 15.5 / 40 | 29 of 100 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 46/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | partial | 12.6 / 18 | Cargo.toml, serde/Cargo.toml, serde_derive/Cargo.toml (toolchain convention, no task runner) |
| Automated tests | met | 22 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | not met | 0 / 11 | — |
| Static type checking | met | 11 / 11 | Rust (statically typed) |
| Reproducible environment | not met | 0 / 10 | — |
| Demonstrated agent practice | not met | 0 / 10 | no agent-authored commits among the last 100 |
| Automated maintenance | not met | 0 / 8 | no automated dependency updates observed |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Pinned-Dependencies | not met | 0 / 10 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 0 |

### Code legibility for models — 98/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | met | 45 / 45 | Rust (statically typed) |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 52.7 / 55 | 8/189 source files over 60KB |

## Collection warnings

- Star history unavailable: GitHub GraphQL error: Resource not accessible by personal access token
- Community profile unavailable
- crates package 'serde' points at a different repository (https://github.com/serde-rs/serde); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- crates package 'serde_test' points at a different repository (https://github.com/serde-rs/test); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- Could not fetch crates package 'serde_test_suite' from its registry
- crates package 'serde_derive' points at a different repository (https://github.com/serde-rs/serde); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- crates package 'serde_derive_internals' points at a different repository (https://github.com/serde-rs/serde); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- Could not fetch crates package 'serde_derive_tests_no_std' 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