# pantsbuild/rust-protobuf — health index 10/100 (Critical)

> Inspection of the public repository pantsbuild/rust-protobuf by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 10 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/pantsbuild/rust-protobuf
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/pantsbuild/rust-protobuf
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/pantsbuild/rust-protobuf/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/p/pantsbuild/rust-protobuf.svg
- Inspected: 2026-09-30
- Methodology: metrics 2.10.0, report schema 0.34.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 21% | 20/100 | At Risk |
| Community & Adoption | 17% | 14/100 | Critical |
| Sustainability & Governance | 23% | 61/100 | Moderate |
| Engineering Quality | 19% | 11/100 | Critical |
| Security | 16% | 45/100 | Weak |
| AI Readiness | 4% | 33/100 | At Risk |

The weighted overall 31 is calibrated to 25 on the published index scale (record calibration 2026-08-02). Abandonment Policy applies a 40% multiplier to weighted overall health and gives it a ceiling of 19.

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Rust implementation of Google protocol buffers |
| Classification | library |
| Primary language | Rust |
| License | MIT |
| Stars | 0 |
| Forks | 1 |
| Created | 2019-05-18 |
| Last push | 2019-05-20 |
| Latest release | v2.5.0 |
| Commits (last year) | 0 |
| Bus factor | 1 |
| Archived | yes — the repository is no longer maintained on GitHub |
| Fork | yes |

## Published packages

| Registry | Package | Latest | Monthly downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| crates | protoc | 2.28.0 | 105,782 |
| crates | protobuf | 3.7.2 | 9,415,541 |
| crates | protoc-rust | 2.28.0 | 76,915 |
| crates | protobuf-codegen | 3.7.2 | 2,938,458 |
| crates | protobuf-codegen-pure | 2.28.0 | 290,134 |

## Vitality — 20/100 (At Risk)

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

### Development activity — 1/100 (Critical)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | not met | 0 / 36 | last push 2689 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 | project is archived |

### 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 | 43 version tags (no GitHub releases) |
| Release recency | not met | 0 / 36 | latest release 2725 days ago |
| Release cadence | met | 27 / 27 | a release every ~12.2 days |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases | excluded | 0 / 10 | no releases found |

### Abandonment — 40/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project is still maintained | partial | 40 / 100 | the repository is archived on GitHub |

## Community & Adoption — 14/100 (Critical)

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

### Popularity & adoption — 5/100 (Critical)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | not met | 0 / 60 | 0 stars |
| Forks | not met | 0 / 25 | 1 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 5 / 15 | 9 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 (MIT) |
| 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 — 61/100 (Moderate)

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) — 35/100 (Weak)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 9 / 54 | 1 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 2.6 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 88% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 65 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 12 contributing companies or organizations |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 33/100 (At Risk)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | excluded | 0 / 42 | no issues or no data |
| PR acceptance | partial | 15 / 30 | 1/2 decided PRs merged |
| 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 — 89/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | met | 30 / 30 | organization-owned |
| Verified domain | met | 20 / 20 | — |
| Owner reach | partial | 14.2 / 25 | 92 followers of pantsbuild |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 65 public repos, account ~13 yr old |

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published & resolvable | met | 25 / 25 | 2 package(s) on crates |
| Publish recency | met | 35 / 35 | latest publish 12 days ago |
| Version history | met | 20 / 20 | 180 published versions |
| Not deprecated | met | 20 / 20 | active, not deprecated or yanked |

## Engineering Quality — 11/100 (Critical)

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

### Engineering practices — 8/100 (Critical)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | not met | 0 / 24 | — |
| Tests present | not met | 0 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | not met | 0 / 16 | — |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | met | 6.4 / 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://docs.rs/protobuf |
| Repository description | not met | 0 / 10 | — |
| Topics | not met | 0 / 10 | — |
| Wiki | not met | 0 / 10 | — |

## Security — 45/100 (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 — 36/100 (Weak)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): CI-Tests, Dangerous-Workflow, Packaging, Pinned-Dependencies, Signed-Releases, Token-Permissions. 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 12 contributing companies or organizations |
| Dangerous-Workflow | excluded | 0 / 10 | no workflows found |
| 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 | not met | 0 / 7.5 | project is archived |
| Packaging | excluded | 0 / 5 | packaging workflow not detected |
| Pinned-Dependencies | excluded | 0 / 5 | no dependencies found |
| SAST | not met | 0 / 5 | no SAST tool detected |
| Security-Policy | not met | 0 / 5 | security policy file not detected |
| Signed-Releases | excluded | 0 / 7.5 | no releases found |
| Token-Permissions | excluded | 0 / 7.5 | No tokens found |
| Vulnerabilities | partial | 6.8 / 7.5 | 1 existing vulnerabilities detected |

### Dependency advisories — 81/100 (Excellent)

Matched the crates:protoc@2.28.0 runtime dependency closure — what installing the published package pulls in — 21 packages. 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 | partial | 12 / 25 | 1 affected: rustix 0.38.10 (moderate 6.5) |
| No advisories left outstanding | partial | 34.4 / 40 | 1 advisory-carrying package(s) unaddressed past 90 days; oldest published 1077 days ago |

### 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 — 33/100 (At Risk)

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 — 2/100 (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 | 1.6 / 40 | 3 of 100 human commits state their intent (structured subject or explanatory body) |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 26/100 (At Risk)

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | partial | 12.6 / 18 | Cargo.toml, perftest/bytes/Cargo.toml, perftest/vs-cxx/Cargo.toml (toolchain convention, no task runner) |
| Automated tests | not met | 0 / 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 | excluded | 0 / 10 | no dependencies found |

### Code legibility for models — 99/100 (Exceptional)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | met | 45 / 45 | Rust (statically typed) |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 54.1 / 55 | 3/187 source files over 60KB |

### Machine-readable interfaces — 50/100 (Moderate)

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 | interop/cxx/interop_pb.proto, perftest/bytes/src/messages.proto, perftest/vs-cxx/perftest_data.proto, proto/google/protobuf/any.proto, proto/google/protobuf/api.proto, proto/google/protobuf/compiler/plugin.proto, proto/google/protobuf/descriptor.proto, proto/google/protobuf/duration.proto, proto/google/protobuf/empty.proto, proto/google/protobuf/field_mask.proto, proto/google/protobuf/source_context.proto, proto/google/protobuf/struct.proto, proto/google/protobuf/timestamp.proto, proto/google/protobuf/type.proto, proto/google/protobuf/wrappers.proto, proto/rustproto.proto, protobuf-fuzz/src/all_types_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_basic_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_carllerche_bytes_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_default_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_enable_lite_runtime_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_enum_alias_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_enum_unknown_values_preserved_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_enum_values_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_ext_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_fmt_json_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_fmt_json_well_known_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_fmt_text_format_0_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_fmt_text_format_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_generate_accessors_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_ident_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_import_descriptor_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_lite_runtime_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_map_carllerche_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_map_simple_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_nonunique_enum_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_oneof_expose_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_oneof_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_oneof_recursive_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_reflect_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_repeated_field_vec_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_repeated_packed_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_root_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_serde_derive_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_singular_concat_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_singular_field_option_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_sync_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/common/v2/test_well_known_types_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_arena.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_custom_options.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_drop_unknown_fields.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_embed_optimize_for.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_empty.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_import.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_import_lite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_import_public.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_import_public_lite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_lazy_dependencies.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_lazy_dependencies_custom_option.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_lazy_dependencies_enum.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_lite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_lite_imports_nonlite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_mset.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_mset_wire_format.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_no_arena.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_no_arena_import.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_no_arena_lite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_no_field_presence.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_no_generic_services.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_optimize_for.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_preserve_unknown_enum.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_preserve_unknown_enum2.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_proto3_arena.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_proto3_arena_lite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_proto3_lite.proto, protobuf-test/src/google/protobuf/unittest_well_known_types.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/struct.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test-sanitize-file-name_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_carllerche_bytes_default_value_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_default_values_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_group_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_nested_imported_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_nested_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_nonunique_1_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_nonunique_2_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_nonunique_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_pkg_nested_imported_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_pkg_nested_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_root_imported_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_import_root_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_oneof_default_value_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_oneof_group_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_required_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v2/test_special~characters file{name}_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v3/test_ident_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v3/test_issue_190_pb.proto, protobuf-test/src/v3/test_zeros_are_not_written_pb.proto, protoc/test-protoc/src/data.proto |
| MCP server | excluded | 0 / 20 | not applicable to this kind of software |
| Runnable examples | not met | 0 / 40 | — |

## Collection warnings

- Community profile unavailable
- crates package 'protoc' points at a different repository (https://github.com/stepancheg/rust-protobuf/tree/master/protoc/); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- crates package 'protoc-rust' points at a different repository (https://github.com/stepancheg/rust-protobuf/); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- Could not fetch crates package 'protobuf-fuzz' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'protobuf-test' from its registry
- Could not fetch crates package 'protobuf-test-common' from its registry
- crates package 'protobuf-codegen-pure' points at a different repository (https://github.com/stepancheg/rust-protobuf/tree/master/protobuf-codegen-pure/); excluded from ecosystem scoring
- GitHub dependency-graph SBOM unavailable (404); the dependency graph may be disabled for this repository

## 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