Map of GitHub
This is a map of 690,000+ GitHub projects. Each dot is a project. Dots are close to each other if they have a lot of common
stargazers.
Logo by Louise Kashcha, 9 years old. Thank you ❤️
Map releases
- Current release, May 10, 2025 - 690K projects, 1.5K clusters
- Initial release, May 8, 2023 - 400K projects, 1K clusters
How was it made?
The first step was to fetch who gave stars to which repositories. For this I used a public data set of github activity events on
Google BigQuery, considering events between Feb 2011 and May 2025. This gave me around 500 million stars.
(Side note: Mind blowing to think that Milky Way has more than 100 billion stars)
In the second phase I computed exact Jaccard Similarity between each repository.
For my home computer's 24GB RAM this was too much, however an AWS EC2 instance with 512GB of RAM chewed through it in a few hours.
(Side note: I tried other similarities too, but Jaccard gave the most believable results)
In the third phase I used a few clustering algorithms to split repositories together. I liked Leiden clustering
the best and ended up with 1,500+ clusters with ~690K projects.
In the fourth phase I used my own ngraph.forcelayout to compute layouts of nodes
inside clusters, and a separate configuration to get global layout of clusters.
In the fifth phase we need to render the map. Unlike my previous projects, I didn't want to reinvent the wheel, so
ended up using maplibre. All I had to do was convert my data into GeoJSON format, generate tiles
with tippecanoe and configure the browsing experience.
Country names
A lot of country labels were generated with help of ChatGPT. If you find something wrong, you can right click it, edit, and send
a pull request - I'd be grateful.
The query that I used to generate labels was twofold. First I setup the system prompt to be:
You are a master namer of programming communities. Your task is to create a unique, specific, and memorable name for a "country" of GitHub repositories based on their common themes, technologies, or purposes.
The name should be:
- Concise (1-3 words maximum)
- Distinctive and specific to these particular repositories
- Capture the unique essence of this specific collection
- AVOID generic terms like "JSWorld", "UI", "Web", "Forge", "Archipelago", "Hub", "Republic", "Nexus", etc.
- Creative but immediately understandable
- If repositories are focused on a specific language, framework, or domain, the name should reflect this specificity
- IMPORTANT: If two repositories are similar, DO NOT combine their names (e.g., avoid "NodeNexus" if there's also a "Node Nexus")
- Use strong imagery and metaphors (e.g., "Anvil Force" for build tools, "Circuit Citadel" for hardware libs)
- For collections with a clear theme or purpose, choose a name that evokes that specific technology or domain
Each name must be HIGHLY DISTINCT from all other countries. Imagine this name appearing on a map - it should be instantly recognizable.
Only return the name itself without explanations or quotes - just the raw name.
Second the user input was:
Name a country containing these GitHub repositories: repoList.
Repository names without owners: repoNamesOnly
Please analyze the specific themes, technologies, and unique aspects of these repositories to create a distinct name that wouldn't apply to other programming communities.
The name should be distinctive and not easily confused with other country names on a map.
If LLM returned a name that was too close to previous names, I would ask it to try again and increase the temperature to be more creative.
I liked the results very much: It is fun to explore the map, discover the land, and peer into their meaning.
Geocoding?
To implement a searchbox, I used a simple dump of all repositories, indexed by their first letter (or their author's). So when you type
a in the search box, I look up all repositories that start with a and show them to you with fuzzy matcher on the client.
Design
Most of the time I like data presented by this project better than visual design of the map. If you have experience designing maps
or just have a wonderful design vision how it should look like - please don't hesitate to share. I'm still looking for the style
that matches the data.
Support
If you find this project useful and would like to support it - please join the support group.
If you need any help with this project or have any questions - don't hesitate to open an issue here or ping me on twitter
Thank you to all my friends and supporters who helped me to get this project off the ground:
Ryan, Andrey, Alex, Dmytro. You are awesome!
Thank you to my dear daughter Louise for making a logo for this project. I love you!
Endless gratitude to all open source contributors who made this project possible. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.
License
I'm releasing this repository under MIT license. However if you use the data in your own work, please consider giving attribution to this project.
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