# microsoft/setup-msbuild — health index 18/100 (Critical)

> Inspection of the public repository microsoft/setup-msbuild by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 18 out of 100, placing it in the Critical 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/microsoft/setup-msbuild
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/microsoft/setup-msbuild
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/microsoft/setup-msbuild/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/m/microsoft/setup-msbuild.svg
- Inspected: 2026-08-01
- Methodology: metrics 2.10.0, report schema 0.27.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 21% | 41/100 | Weak |
| Community & Adoption | 17% | 66/100 | Good |
| Sustainability & Governance | 23% | 69/100 | Good |
| Engineering Quality | 19% | 45/100 | Weak |
| Security | 16% | 32/100 | At Risk |
| AI Readiness | 4% | 42/100 | Weak |

The weighted overall 51 is calibrated to 51 on the published index scale (record calibration 2026-08-02). A dependency reported as a malicious package applies a 35% multiplier to weighted overall health and gives it a Critical ceiling of 19.

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | A GitHub Action to facilitate configuring MSBuild in the workflow PATH for building .NET Framework applications. |
| Primary language | TypeScript |
| License | MIT |
| Stars | 394 |
| Forks | 92 |
| Created | 2020-01-31 |
| Last push | 2026-03-20 |
| Latest release | v3 |
| Commits (last year) | 6 |
| Bus factor | 1 |
| Topics | devops, actions, dotnet-framework, msbuild-action, msbuild, visual-studio |

## Vitality — 41/100 (Weak)

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

### Development activity — 19/100 (Critical)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | partial | 9.9 / 36 | last push 133 days ago |
| Commit cadence | partial | 1.4 / 36 | 2/52 weeks with commits |
| Commit volume | partial | 7.6 / 18 | 6 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 — 74/100 (Good)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | met | 27 / 27 | 12 releases published |
| Release recency | partial | 27 / 36 | latest release 133 days ago |
| Release cadence | partial | 12.6 / 27 | a release every ~185.5 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 | last human commit 154 days ago |

## Community & Adoption — 66/100 (Good)

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

### Popularity & adoption — 67/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | partial | 42.1 / 60 | 394 stars |
| Forks | partial | 16.3 / 25 | 92 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 8.8 / 15 | 39 watchers |

### Community health — 65/100 (Good)

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

## Sustainability & Governance — 69/100 (Good)

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) — 38/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 9 / 54 | 1 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 5.9 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 74% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 13 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 4 contributing companies or organizations |

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

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | partial | 39.6 / 42 | 94% of issues closed |
| PR acceptance | partial | 20.2 / 30 | 29/43 decided PRs merged |
| Newcomer PR acceptance | excluded | 0 / 13 | no first-time contributor's PR decided in 30d |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | partial | 4.5 / 15 | Found 6/18 approved changesets -- score normalized to 3 |

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

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | met | 30 / 30 | organization-owned |
| Verified domain | excluded | 0 / 20 | verified-domain status not read for this organization |
| Owner reach | met | 25 / 25 | 126,414 followers of microsoft |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 8234 public repos, account ~12 yr old |

## Engineering Quality — 45/100 (Weak)

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

### Engineering practices — 42/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 1 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | not met | 0 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | met | 16 / 16 | .eslintrc.json |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | not met | 0 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | partial | 2 / 20 | 1 out of 6 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 1 |

### Documentation — 50/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 30 / 30 | — |
| Documentation directory | not met | 0 / 25 | — |
| Documentation / homepage site | not met | 0 / 15 | — |
| Repository description | met | 10 / 10 | — |
| Topics | met | 10 / 10 | 6 topics |
| Wiki | not met | 0 / 10 | — |

## Security — 32/100 (At Risk)

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 — 15/100 (Critical)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Packaging, Signed-Releases. Remaining weights renormalized. A dependency reported as a malicious package applies a 35% multiplier to Security posture and gives it a Critical ceiling of 19.

| 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 | partial | 0.2 / 2.5 | 1 out of 6 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 1 |
| CII-Best-Practices | not met | 0 / 2.5 | no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected |
| Code-Review | partial | 2.2 / 7.5 | Found 6/18 approved changesets -- score normalized to 3 |
| Contributors | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | project has 4 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 | 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 | partial | 1.5 / 5 | SAST tool is not run on all commits -- score normalized to 3 |
| 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 | not met | 0 / 7.5 | 78 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 613 resolved dependencies against OSV. 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 — 35/100 (Weak)

1 resolved dependency(ies) resolve to a version the registry still serves and the OpenSSF corpus reports as malicious. Direct and indirect are treated alike: an install-time payload runs at any depth in the graph. A report here concerns the package as published, not the maintainers of this repository, which may have resolved it unknowingly.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| No dependency reported as a malicious package | partial | 35 / 100 | 1 reported as malicious: fsevents 1.2.9 |

### 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 — 42/100 (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 | 16.4 / 40 | 28 of 91 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 40/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | not met | 0 / 18 | — |
| Automated tests | not met | 0 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | met | 11 / 11 | .eslintrc.json |
| Static type checking | met | 11 / 11 | tsconfig.json |
| Reproducible environment | met | 10 / 10 | lockfile |
| Demonstrated agent practice | not met | 0 / 10 | no agent-authored commits among the last 100 |
| Automated maintenance | met | 8 / 8 | 9 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 — 100/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | met | 45 / 45 | TypeScript (statically typed) |
| Manageable file sizes | met | 55 / 55 | 0/2 source files over 60KB |

## Collection warnings

- Star history unavailable: GitHub GraphQL error: Resource not accessible by personal access token

## 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