# nats-io/nats.go — health index 96/100 (Exceptional)

> Inspection of the public repository nats-io/nats.go 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/nats-io/nats.go
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/nats-io/nats.go
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/nats-io/nats.go/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/n/nats-io/nats.go.svg
- Inspected: 2026-08-04
- Methodology: metrics 2.10.0, report schema 0.30.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 21% | 94/100 | Exceptional |
| Community & Adoption | 17% | 91/100 | Excellent |
| Sustainability & Governance | 23% | 86/100 | Excellent |
| Engineering Quality | 19% | 80/100 | Excellent |
| Security | 16% | 63/100 | Moderate |
| AI Readiness | 4% | 83/100 | Excellent |

The weighted overall 84 is calibrated to 96 on the published index scale (record calibration 2026-08-02).

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Golang client for NATS, the cloud native messaging system. |
| Homepage | https://nats.io |
| Primary language | Go |
| License | Apache-2.0 |
| Stars | 6,708 |
| Forks | 818 |
| Created | 2012-08-15 |
| Last push | 2026-07-28 |
| Latest release | v1.52.0 |
| Commits (last year) | 127 |
| Bus factor | 2 |
| Topics | go, golang, nats, microservices, microservices-architecture, pub-sub, cloud-native, cloud-native-architectures, cloud-native-microservices |

## Published packages

| Registry | Package | Latest | Monthly downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| go | github.com/nats-io/nats.go | v1.52.0 | — |

## Vitality — 94/100 (Exceptional)

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

### Development activity — 90/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | met | 36 / 36 | last push 6 days ago |
| Commit cadence | partial | 25.6 / 36 | 37/52 weeks with commits |
| Commit volume | met | 18 / 18 | 127 commits in the last year |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Maintained | met | 10 / 10 | 24 commit(s) and 10 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |

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

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | met | 27 / 27 | 70 releases published |
| Release recency | met | 36 / 36 | latest release 89 days ago |
| Release cadence | met | 27 / 27 | a release every ~31.3 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 25 days ago |

## Community & Adoption — 91/100 (Excellent)

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

### Popularity & adoption — 96/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | met | 60 / 60 | 6,708 stars |
| Forks | partial | 24.3 / 25 | 818 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 12.1 / 15 | 153 watchers |

### Community health — 85/100 (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 | not met | 0 / 6.3 | — |

## Sustainability & Governance — 86/100 (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) — 64/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 25.2 / 54 | 2 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 15 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 34% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 100 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 21 contributing companies or organizations |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 89/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | partial | 34.8 / 42 | 83% of issues closed |
| PR acceptance | partial | 25.8 / 30 | 1053/1225 decided PRs merged |
| Newcomer PR acceptance | met | 13 / 13 | 3/3 first-time contributors' PRs merged in 30d |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | met | 15 / 15 | all changesets reviewed |

### Ownership & stewardship — 99/100 (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 | partial | 24.4 / 25 | 2,441 followers of nats-io |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 132 public repos, account ~11 yr old |

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published & resolvable | met | 25 / 25 | 1 package(s) on go |
| Publish recency | met | 35 / 35 | latest publish 89 days ago |
| Version history | met | 20 / 20 | 77 published versions |
| Not deprecated | met | 20 / 20 | active, not deprecated or yanked |

## Engineering Quality — 80/100 (Excellent)

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

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 4 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | met | 24 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | met | 16 / 16 | .golangci.yaml |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | not met | 0 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | met | 20 / 20 | 26 out of 26 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |

### Documentation — 75/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| README | met | 30 / 30 | — |
| Documentation directory | not met | 0 / 25 | — |
| Documentation / homepage site | met | 15 / 15 | https://nats.io |
| Repository description | met | 10 / 10 | — |
| Topics | met | 10 / 10 | 9 topics |
| Wiki | met | 10 / 10 | — |

## Security — 63/100 (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 — 56/100 (Moderate)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Branch-Protection, 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 | 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 | 26 out of 26 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 | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | all changesets reviewed |
| Contributors | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | project has 21 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 | met | 5 / 5 | project is fuzzed |
| License | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | license file detected |
| Maintained | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | 24 commit(s) and 10 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 | 2.5 / 5 | SAST tool is not run on all commits -- score normalized to 5 |
| Security-Policy | not met | 0 / 5 | security policy file not 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 | 16 existing vulnerabilities detected |

### Dependency advisories — 89/100 (Excellent)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Indirect dependencies free of known advisories. Remaining weights renormalized. Matched 5 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 | partial | 26.6 / 35 | 1 affected: github.com/klauspost/compress v1.18.5 (unknown) |
| 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 | met | 40 / 40 | no advisory has been public longer than 90 days |

### 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 — 83/100 (Excellent)

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 — 85/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent instructions | met | 45 / 45 | CLAUDE.md |
| Machine-readable docs (llms.txt) | not met | 0 / 15 | — |
| Legible commit history | met | 40 / 40 | 84 of 100 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 69/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | partial | 12.6 / 18 | go.mod (toolchain convention, no task runner) |
| Automated tests | met | 22 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | met | 11 / 11 | .golangci.yaml |
| Static type checking | met | 11 / 11 | Go (statically typed) |
| Reproducible environment | met | 10 / 10 | Dockerfile, lockfile |
| Demonstrated agent practice | partial | 2 / 10 | 1 of the last 100 commits agent-authored or agent-credited |
| 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 — 97/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | met | 45 / 45 | Go (statically typed) |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 52.2 / 55 | 9/179 source files over 60KB |

### Machine-readable interfaces — 100/100 (Exceptional)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): MCP server. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| API schema (OpenAPI/GraphQL/proto) | met | 40 / 40 | encoders/protobuf/testdata/pbtest.proto |
| MCP server | excluded | 0 / 20 | not applicable to this kind of software |
| Runnable examples | met | 40 / 40 | examples |

## 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