# siderolabs/talos — health index 49/100 (At risk)

> Inspection of the public repository siderolabs/talos by inspect.software. It holds a health index of 49 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/siderolabs/talos
- Report page: https://inspect.software/software/siderolabs/talos
- Full JSON report: https://inspect.software/api/repositories/siderolabs/talos/report
- Badge: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inspect-software/badges/main/v1/s/siderolabs/talos.svg
- Inspected: 2026-07-21
- Methodology: metrics 1.13.0, report schema 0.18.0 (https://inspect.software/methodology.md)

## Category summary

| Category | Weight | Index | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vitality | 22% | 96/100 | Excellent |
| Community & Adoption | 18% | 94/100 | Excellent |
| Sustainability & Governance | 24% | 80/100 | Good |
| Engineering Quality | 20% | 76/100 | Good |
| Security | 16% | 53/100 | Moderate |
| AI Readiness | not counted | 60/100 | Moderate |

High-Risk Jurisdiction Policy applies a 75% multiplier to weighted overall health and gives it an At risk ceiling of 49.

## Repository facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Description | Talos Linux is a modern Linux distribution built for Kubernetes. |
| Homepage | https://siderolabs.com/talos-linux |
| Primary language | Go |
| License | MPL-2.0 |
| Stars | 10,806 |
| Forks | 860 |
| Created | 2017-11-03 |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 |
| Latest release | v1.12.10 |
| Commits (last year) | 997 |
| Bus factor | 2 |
| Topics | linux, linux-distribution, kubernetes, kubernetes-distribution, go, musl, grpc, cloud-native, containerd |

## Published packages

| Registry | Package | Latest | Monthly downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| go | github.com/siderolabs/talos | v1.13.6 | — |

## Vitality — 96/100 (Excellent)

Is the project alive — is code being written and are releases shipping? Weight: 22% of the overall index.

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push recency | met | 36 / 36 | last push 0 days ago |
| Commit cadence | met | 36 / 36 | 52/52 weeks with commits |
| Commit volume | met | 18 / 18 | 997 commits in the last year |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Maintained | met | 10 / 10 | 30 commit(s) and 21 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |

### Release discipline — 90/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ships releases | met | 27 / 27 | 100 releases published |
| Release recency | met | 36 / 36 | latest release 3 days ago |
| Release cadence | met | 27 / 27 | a release every ~7.3 days |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Signed-Releases | not met | 0 / 10 | Project has not signed or included provenance with any releases. |

### Abandonment — 100/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project is still maintained | met | 100 / 100 | maintenance record not established from the collected data |

## Community & Adoption — 94/100 (Excellent)

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

### Popularity & adoption — 95/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | met | 60 / 60 | 10,806 stars |
| Forks | partial | 24.5 / 25 | 860 forks |
| Watchers | partial | 10.7 / 15 | 86 watchers |

### Community health — 92/100 (Excellent)

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

## Sustainability & Governance — 80/100 (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) — 61/100 (Moderate)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus factor | partial | 25.2 / 54 | 2 contributor(s) cover half of all commits |
| Commit distribution | partial | 12.2 / 22.5 | top contributor authored 46% of commits |
| Contributor breadth | met | 13.5 / 13.5 | 100 contributors |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Contributors | met | 10 / 10 | project has 43 contributing companies or organizations |

### Issue & PR responsiveness — 92/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue resolution | partial | 44.7 / 46.8 | 96% of issues closed |
| PR acceptance | partial | 32.5 / 38.2 | 7129/8388 decided PRs merged |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Code-Review | met | 15 / 15 | all changesets reviewed |

### Ownership & stewardship — 76/100 (Good)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership backing | met | 30 / 30 | organization-owned |
| Verified domain | not met | 0 / 20 | — |
| Owner reach | partial | 20.6 / 25 | 725 followers of siderolabs |
| Track record | met | 25 / 25 | 144 public repos, account ~10 yr old |

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published & resolvable | met | 25 / 25 | 1 package(s) on go |
| Publish recency | met | 35 / 35 | latest publish 12 days ago |
| Version history | met | 20 / 20 | 385 published versions |
| Not deprecated | met | 20 / 20 | active, not deprecated or yanked |

## Engineering Quality — 76/100 (Good)

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

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

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI workflows | met | 24 / 24 | 35 workflow(s) |
| Tests present | met | 24 / 24 | — |
| Linter config | met | 16 / 16 | .golangci.yml |
| Pre-commit hooks | not met | 0 / 9.6 | — |
| .editorconfig | not met | 0 / 6.4 | — |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: CI-Tests | met | 20 / 20 | 29 out of 29 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |

### Documentation — 65/100 (Moderate)

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

## Security — 53/100 (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 — 49/100 (At risk)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Branch-Protection, Packaging. Remaining weights renormalized. High-Risk Jurisdiction Policy applies a 75% multiplier to Security posture and gives it an At risk ceiling of 49.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Binary-Artifacts | partial | 6 / 7.5 | binaries present in source code |
| 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 | 29 out of 29 merged PRs checked by a CI test -- score normalized to 10 |
| CII-Best-Practices | partial | 1.2 / 2.5 | badge detected: Passing |
| Code-Review | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | all changesets reviewed |
| Contributors | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | project has 43 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 | met | 5 / 5 | project is fuzzed |
| License | met | 2.5 / 2.5 | license file detected |
| Maintained | met | 7.5 / 7.5 | 30 commit(s) and 21 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10 |
| Packaging | excluded | 0 / 5 | packaging workflow not detected |
| Pinned-Dependencies | partial | 3.5 / 5 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 7 |
| SAST | not met | 0 / 5 | SAST tool is not run on all commits -- score normalized to 0 |
| Security-Policy | met | 5 / 5 | security policy file detected |
| Signed-Releases | not met | 0 / 7.5 | Project has not signed or included provenance with any releases. |
| Token-Permissions | not met | 0 / 7.5 | detected GitHub workflow tokens with excessive permissions |
| Vulnerabilities | partial | 1.5 / 7.5 | 8 existing vulnerabilities detected |

### Dependency advisories — 71/100 (Good)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Indirect dependencies free of known advisories. Remaining weights renormalized. Matched 827 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 | 18.5 / 35 | 1 affected: github.com/osrg/gobgp/v4 v4.6.1-0.20260629105749-2132288c5159 (moderate 5.9) |
| 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 | partial | 34.9 / 40 | 1 advisory-carrying package(s) unaddressed past 90 days; oldest published 104 days ago |

### 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 — 75/100 (Good)

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 | partial | 75 / 100 | Russia: contributor_organization (1) |

## AI Readiness — 60/100 (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 — 1/100 (Critical)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Legible commit history. Remaining weights renormalized.

| 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 | excluded | 0 / 40 | no data |

### Verify loop (build / test / typecheck) — 96/100 (Excellent)

Excluded from scoring (no data or not applicable): Demonstrated agent practice, Automated maintenance. Remaining weights renormalized.

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-command bootstrap | met | 18 / 18 | Makefile |
| Automated tests | met | 22 / 22 | — |
| Lint / format config | met | 11 / 11 | .golangci.yml |
| Static type checking | met | 11 / 11 | Go (statically typed) |
| Reproducible environment | met | 10 / 10 | Dockerfile, lockfile |
| Demonstrated agent practice | excluded | 0 / 10 | no data |
| Automated maintenance | excluded | 0 / 8 | no data |
| OpenSSF Scorecard: Pinned-Dependencies | partial | 7 / 10 | dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 7 |

### Code legibility for models — 100/100 (Excellent)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type-checkable code | met | 45 / 45 | Go (statically typed) |
| Manageable file sizes | partial | 54.5 / 55 | 26/2645 source files over 60KB |

### Machine-readable interfaces — 40/100 (At risk)

| Criterion | Status | Points | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| API schema (OpenAPI/GraphQL/proto) | met | 40 / 40 | api/cluster/cluster.proto, api/common/common.proto, api/inspect/inspect.proto, api/machine/debug.proto, api/machine/image.proto, api/machine/lifecycle.proto, api/machine/lvm.proto, api/machine/machine.proto, api/machine/md.proto, api/resource/config/config.proto, api/resource/definitions/block/block.proto, api/resource/definitions/cluster/cluster.proto, api/resource/definitions/cri/cri.proto, api/resource/definitions/enums/enums.proto, api/resource/definitions/etcd/etcd.proto, api/resource/definitions/extensions/extensions.proto, api/resource/definitions/files/files.proto, api/resource/definitions/hardware/hardware.proto, api/resource/definitions/k8s/k8s.proto, api/resource/definitions/kubeaccess/kubeaccess.proto, api/resource/definitions/kubespan/kubespan.proto, api/resource/definitions/network/network.proto, api/resource/definitions/perf/perf.proto, api/resource/definitions/proto/proto.proto, api/resource/definitions/runtime/runtime.proto, api/resource/definitions/secrets/secrets.proto, api/resource/definitions/security/security.proto, api/resource/definitions/siderolink/siderolink.proto, api/resource/definitions/storage/storage.proto, api/resource/definitions/time/time.proto, api/resource/definitions/v1alpha1/v1alpha1.proto, api/resource/network/device_config.proto, api/security/security.proto, api/signer/signer.proto, api/storage/storage.proto, api/time/time.proto, api/vendor/google/api/expr/v1alpha1/checked.proto, api/vendor/google/api/expr/v1alpha1/eval.proto, api/vendor/google/api/expr/v1alpha1/explain.proto, api/vendor/google/api/expr/v1alpha1/syntax.proto, api/vendor/google/api/expr/v1alpha1/value.proto, api/vendor/google/rpc/status.proto, pkg/makefs/testdata/deeply_nested.proto, pkg/makefs/testdata/nested_directories.proto, pkg/makefs/testdata/simple_directory.proto, pkg/makefs/testdata/symlinks.proto, pkg/provision/api/remoteprovision.proto |
| MCP server | not met | 0 / 20 | — |
| Runnable examples | not met | 0 / 40 | — |

## 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