GitHub Date of Creation

Instant project maturity insights, creation timelines, and maintenance health metrics injected seamlessly into GitHub.

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Overview

GitHub Date of Creation is a lightweight, cross-browser extension that surfaces the age, lifecycle stage, and maintenance health of any repository directly within GitHub's interface. Built natively for Manifest V3 with zero external dependencies, it eliminates the need to dig through commit histories or release logs to assess software longevity.

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Visual Showcase

Repository Maturity Badge	Redesigned Options & Theme Engine

Search Results Integration	Trending Lists Injection

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Core Capabilities

1. Project Maturity Classification (Lindy Effect)

Repositories are categorized into clear longevity tiers based on the Lindy Rule, predicting future viability through proven survival time:

Tier	Lifespan	Interpretation
Sprout	< 1 year	Early-stage or experimental project. Expect rapid API iteration.
Established	1 - 5 years	Proven codebase with demonstrated adoption and initial stability.
Mature	5 - 10 years	Long-standing foundation with stable architectural patterns.
Ancient	> 10 years	Industry standard with exceptional survival probability.

2. Interactive Insight Cards (Hover Tooltips)

Hovering over any injected badge opens an interactive insight card displaying:

• Exact creation date and relative age calculation.
• Last push timestamp and maintenance classification (Active, Stable, Dormant, Legacy).
• Total repository storage footprint in KB, MB, or GB.
• Explanatory breakdown of the repository's lifecycle status.

3. Customizable Visual Themes

Match your personal development environment with three pre-built visual styles:

• GitHub Native: Seamlessly aligns with GitHub's default Primer design system.
• Glassmorphism: Modern translucent frosted-glass styling with backdrop blur.
• Compact: Minimal inline badge footprint for dense repository layouts.

4. API Quota & Security

• Live Quota Meter: Real-time progress meter tracking remaining GitHub REST API requests.
• Personal Access Token (PAT): Optional token configuration to increase rate limits from 60 to 5,000 requests per hour.
• Encrypted Local Storage: Sensitive authentication tokens remain strictly in browser local storage and are never transmitted externally.

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Platform Support Matrix

Platform / Browser	Engine	Status	Distribution
Google Chrome	Chromium / Blink	Supported (MV3)	Unpacked / Zip Release
Brave / Edge / Opera / Vivaldi	Chromium / Blink	Supported (MV3)	Unpacked / Zip Release
Mozilla Firefox (v109+)	Gecko	Supported (MV3)	Temporary Add-on / Zip
Zen Browser / Floorp / Waterfox	Gecko	Supported (MV3)	Direct Zip / Temporary Add-on
Apple Safari / Mobile Browsers	WebKit / Mobile	Supported	Userscript (Tampermonkey)

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Installation

Zen Browser, Firefox, and Gecko-based Browsers

1. Open a new tab and navigate to:

   about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox
   

2. Click Load Temporary Add-on...
3. Select github-date-of-creation-v3.1.3.zip from the Latest Release or select manifest.json from the repository root.

Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Chromium Browsers

1. Download the release archive (github-date-of-creation-v3.1.3.zip) and extract its contents.
2. Navigate to chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions, brave://extensions).
3. Enable Developer mode via the top-right toggle.
4. Click Load unpacked and select the extracted folder.

Userscript Alternative (Safari, Mobile, and Lightweight Setup)

For environments without direct extension loading, install the userscript edition:

• Greasy Fork: github-date-of-creation on Greasy Fork
• Compatible with Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey, and Userscripts across desktop and mobile.

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Configuration Reference

Setting	Options	Default	Description
Date Format	Relative, YYYY-MM-DD, MMM D, YYYY, Custom	Relative	Toggles between relative time ("5 years ago") and explicit calendar dates.
Maintenance Health	Enabled / Disabled	Enabled	Displays real-time last push indicators (Active, Stable, Dormant, Legacy).
Repository Size	Enabled / Disabled	Enabled	Shows repository storage footprint calculated from GitHub's metadata.
Card Theme	GitHub Native, Glassmorphism, Compact	GitHub Native	Sets the visual styling of badge tooltips and sidebar cards.
Personal Access Token	String	Empty	Authenticates API requests for 5,000 req/hour rate limits.

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Architecture & Performance

• Zero External Dependencies: Replaced legacy date formatting bundles with native Intl.DateTimeFormat and Intl.RelativeTimeFormat APIs, reducing footprint by over 80%.
• Dual Manifest V3 Runtime: Unified background execution using Chromium service workers with fallback to Gecko background scripts for universal browser compatibility.
• Non-Blocking Asynchronous Hydration: Metadata fetching executes concurrently using stale-while-revalidate caching and time-to-live (TTL) invalidation to eliminate render blocking.

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Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/sizwinz/github-date-of-creation.git

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Execute unit test suite
npm test

# Build production zip and xpi distribution packages
npm run build

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License

MIT License. Copyright (c) sizwinz. Based on original work by Varayut Lerdkanlayanawat.