What the data says

372 tools, one checklist, live numbers from GitHub. Some of this will surprise you. Every line links to the proof.

No release in 18 months, but not in Hold 5

Quiet does not mean dead, but by our own rule these should move. Pull requests welcome.

• NuGet Adopt · 125 months quiet
• Architect Trial · 90 months quiet
• cdk8s Adopt · 61 months quiet
• rbenv Adopt · 21 months quiet
• Dive Trial · 19 months quiet

Avoid for now: tools in Hold 27

Archived, deprecated or abandoned. Some of them you may still have in a lockfile.

• Daytona Dev environments · ★ 71448 · Pivoted from dev environments to sandboxes for AI-generated code; the GitHub repo was archived in 2026.
• AutoGen AI & agents · ★ 61602 · In maintenance mode; Microsoft points new work to Microsoft Agent Framework. Last release Sep 2025.
• MinIO Local services & data · ★ 61298 · Repo archived Apr 2026; community edition is source-only with no binaries or console.
• Roo Code AI & agents · ★ 24255 · Repo archived May 2026; the team moved to a cloud product. Cline is the suggested migration path.
• localtunnel Local services & data · ★ 22497 · No release since 2021; the shared public server is often unreliable.
• MailHog Local services & data · ★ 16197 · No release since 2020; Mailpit is the maintained replacement.
• Kaniko Containers & clusters · ★ 15751 · Google archived it in June 2025; Chainguard maintains a security-patch fork (chainguard-forks/kaniko).
• Kubernetes Dashboard Inner loop · ★ 15405 · Repository archived in January 2026; the project points users to Headlamp.
• DevPod Dev environments · ★ 15297 · No release since March 2025. A community fork continues as Devsy (devsy.sh).
• Rye Package & build · ★ 14117 · Deprecated by its maintainers in favour of uv; migrate rather than adopt.
• Volta Package & build · ★ 13053 · Maintainers declared it unmaintained in late 2025 and recommend migrating to mise.
• Earthly Package & build · ★ 12054 · Upstream says it is no longer actively maintained and cloud features are gone; a community fork is EarthBuild.
• Helicone AI & agents · ★ 6243 · Team joined Mintlify in Mar 2026; reported to be in maintenance mode, last tagged release Aug 2025.
• Project Tye Inner loop · ★ 5192 · Archived by Microsoft in 2023; .NET Aspire is the suggested successor.
• CDK for Terraform Platform · ★ 5066 · HashiCorp deprecated CDKTF and archived the repo; last release was v0.21.0 in Jun 2025.
• Overmind Inner loop · ★ 3757 · No release since March 2024. Needs tmux; no Windows support.
• Nixpacks Containers & clusters · ★ 3554 · In maintenance mode and not under active development; Railway recommends Railpack.
• cargo-watch Inner loop · ★ 2852 · Archived in January 2025; maintainers point to bacon or watchexec.
• Honcho Inner loop · ★ 1717 · No release since October 2024.
• Hivemind Inner loop · ★ 1159 · No release since December 2021.
• Smithery AI & agents · ★ 849 · Acquired by Arcade in 2026; hosted connections are reported to shut down Oct 2026, the registry stays.
• Docksal Dev environments · ★ 721 · No release since May 2024; most users have moved to DDEV.
• Bridge to Kubernetes Inner loop · ★ 220 · Retired by Microsoft and the repository is archived.
• Make Package & build · Stable and everywhere; hold only because GNU Make's last release (4.4.1) was Feb 2023. Tabs and shell quirks bite.
• Microsoft Dev Box Dev environments · Closed to new customers since November 2025; features are moving into Windows 365.
• AWS Cloud9 Dev environments · No longer available to new customers since July 2024; AWS points to IDE toolkits and CloudShell.
• Firebase Studio Dev environments · New workspaces disabled since June 2026; full shutdown planned for March 2027.

Best of both: easy to use and made for big systems 11

• Temporal easy 60 · big 70 · Adopt
• Docker Desktop easy 70 · big 60 · Adopt
• OrbStack easy 70 · big 60 · Adopt
• Aspire easy 60 · big 70 · Adopt
• Tilt easy 70 · big 60 · Adopt
• Langfuse easy 60 · big 60 · Adopt
• Podman Desktop easy 60 · big 60 · Adopt
• Rancher Desktop easy 60 · big 60 · Adopt
• Docker Compose easy 60 · big 60 · Adopt
• Spring Boot easy 60 · big 60 · Adopt
• DevSpace easy 60 · big 60 · Trial

Easy wins: very easy, small job

• Mastra easy 90 · TypeScript framework for agents, workflows and RAG
• MCP Inspector easy 90 · Visual test and debug tool for MCP servers
• Astro easy 90 · Content-first web framework with islands
• Claude Code easy 90 · Anthropic's agentic coding tool for the terminal and IDEs
• Turborepo easy 90 · Task runner and cache for JavaScript monorepos
• OpenCode easy 90 · Open-source terminal coding agent for any model
• Go modules easy 90 · Go's built-in dependency management
• Mailpit easy 80 · SMTP catcher with web UI and API for testing email
• Next.js easy 80 · React framework for full-stack web apps
• Laravel easy 80 · PHP web framework with Sail for local Docker
• Vite easy 80 · Frontend dev server and build tool
• mise easy 80 · Polyglot tool versions, env vars and tasks

Most starred on GitHub

1. OpenCode ★ 222621 · Adopt
2. Ollama ★ 185098 · Trial
3. Claude Code ★ 153687 · Adopt
4. LangChain ★ 148611 · Adopt
5. Turbopack ★ 143180 · Adopt
6. Next.js ★ 143180 · Adopt
7. Go modules ★ 139485 · Adopt
8. llama.cpp ★ 132621 · Trial
9. Codex ★ 131399 · Trial
10. Kubernetes ★ 128580 · Adopt
11. Deno ★ 108789 · Adopt
12. Gemini CLI ★ 108590 · Trial

New this year: in Assess 2

• skills.sh Directory and CLI for installing agent skills
• Flisk Local dev loop for microservices and multi-agent stacks

Agent skills a small model uses best

Tested with Haiku on 400 skills. See Skills for how.

1. a11y-audit alirezarezvani/claude-skills · 100/100
2. adversarial-reviewer alirezarezvani/claude-skills · 100/100
3. agent-browser vercel-labs/agent-browser · 100/100
4. agentic-actions-auditor trailofbits/skills · 100/100
5. agents-md getsentry/skills · 100/100
6. api-test-suite-builder alirezarezvani/claude-skills · 100/100
7. appinsights-instrumentation microsoft/azure-skills · 100/100
8. autoplan garrytan/gstack · 100/100
9. aws-ami-builder hashicorp/agent-skills · 100/100
10. azure-deploy microsoft/azure-skills · 100/100
11. benchmark garrytan/gstack · 100/100
12. benchmark-models garrytan/gstack · 100/100

Agent skills a small model gets wrong most

• architecture-designer Jeffallan/claude-skills · 20/100
• flisk-recipe-saas flisk-sh/flisk · 20/100
• gh-prioritizer odykyi/gh-skills · 20/100
• github-release jezweb/claude-skills · 20/100
• grill-me mattpocock/skills · 20/100
• responsiveness-check jezweb/claude-skills · 20/100
• security-reviewer Jeffallan/claude-skills · 20/100
• test-master Jeffallan/claude-skills · 20/100

GitHub numbers fetched 2026-10-28. They refresh every week.