mcpbeat

Github Trending

hoodini/github-trending

Fetch and display GitHub trending repositories and developers. Use when building dashboards showing trending repos, discovering popular projects, or tracking GitHub trends. Triggers on GitHub trending, trending repos, popular repositories, GitHub discover.

This is a copy. The original lives at christophacham/github-trending.

2k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
1
files
instructions only
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
262
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository
npx skills add https://github.com/hoodini/ai-agents-skills --skill github-trending

The instruction itself

8 sections, as written by the author

Access GitHub trending repositories and developers data.

Important Note

GitHub does NOT provide an official trending API. The trending page at github.com/trending must be scraped directly or use the GitHub Search API as an alternative.

Scrape github.com/trending directly using Cheerio:

import * as cheerio from 'cheerio';

interface TrendingRepo {
  owner: string;
  name: string;
  fullName: string;
  url: string;
  description: string;
  language: string;
  languageColor: string;
  stars: number;
  forks: number;
  starsToday: number;
}

async function scrapeTrending(options: {
  language?: string;
  since?: 'daily' | 'weekly' | 'monthly';
} = {}): Promise<TrendingRepo[]> {
  // Build URL: github.com/trending or github.com/trending/typescript?since=weekly
  let url = 'https://github.com/trending';
  if (options.language) {
    url += `/${encodeURIComponent(options.language)}`;
  }
  if (options.since) {
    url += `?since=${options.since}`;
  }

  const response = await fetch(url, {
    headers: {
      'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; TrendingBot/1.0)',
    },
  });
  
  if (!response.ok) {
    throw new Error(`Failed to fetch trending: ${response.status}`);
  }

  const html = await response.text();
  const $ = cheerio.load(html);
  const repos: TrendingRepo[] = [];

  // Each trending repo is in an article.Box-row element
  $('article.Box-row').each((_, element) => {
    const $el = $(element);
    
    // Get repo link (e.g., /owner/repo)
    const repoLink = $el.find('h2 a').attr('href')?.trim() || '';
    const [, owner, name] = repoLink.split('/');
    
    // Get description
    const description = $el.find('p.col-9').text().trim();
    
    // Get language
    const language = $el.find('[itemprop="programmingLanguage"]').text().trim();
    
    // Get language color from the colored dot
    const langColorStyle = $el.find('.repo-language-color').attr('style') || '';
    const langColorMatch = langColorStyle.match(/background-color:\s*([^;]+)/);
    const languageColor = langColorMatch ? langColorMatch[1].trim() : '';
    
    // Get stars (total)
    const starsText = $el.find('a[href$="/stargazers"]').text().trim();
    const stars = parseNumber(starsText);
    
    // Get forks
    const forksText = $el.find('a[href$="/forks"]').text().trim();
    const forks = parseNumber(forksText);
    
    // Get stars today/this week/this month
    const starsTodayText = $el.find('.float-sm-right, .d-inline-block.float-sm-right').text().trim();
    const starsToday = parseNumber(starsTodayText);

    if (owner && name) {
      repos.push({
        owner,
        name,
        fullName: `${owner}/${name}`,
        url: `https://github.com${repoLink}`,
        description,
        language,
        languageColor,
        stars,
        forks,
        starsToday,
      });
    }
  });

  return repos;
}

function parseNumber(text: string): number {
  const clean = text.replace(/,/g, '').trim();
  if (clean.includes('k')) {
    return Math.round(parseFloat(clean) * 1000);
  }
  return parseInt(clean) || 0;
}

Approach 2: GitHub Search API (Official Alternative)

Use GitHub's Search API to find recently created repos with high stars:

interface GitHubSearchResult {
  total_count: number;
  items: GitHubRepo[];
}

interface GitHubRepo {
  full_name: string;
  html_url: string;
  description: string;
  language: string;
  stargazers_count: number;
  forks_count: number;
  created_at: string;
}

async function getTrendingViaSearch(options: {
  language?: string;
  days?: number;
  minStars?: number;
} = {}): Promise<GitHubRepo[]> {
  const days = options.days || 7;
  const minStars = options.minStars || 100;
  
  // Calculate date N days ago
  const date = new Date();
  date.setDate(date.getDate() - days);
  const since = date.toISOString().split('T')[0];

  // Build search query
  const queryParts = [
    `created:>${since}`,
    `stars:>=${minStars}`,
  ];
  if (options.language) {
    queryParts.push(`language:${options.language}`);
  }
  const query = queryParts.join(' ');

  const response = await fetch(
    `https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}&sort=stars&order=desc&per_page=25`,
    {
      headers: {
        'Accept': 'application/vnd.github.v3+json',
        'Authorization': `Bearer ${process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN}`, // Optional but recommended
        'User-Agent': 'TrendingApp/1.0',
      },
    }
  );

  if (!response.ok) {
    throw new Error(`GitHub API error: ${response.status}`);
  }

  const data: GitHubSearchResult = await response.json();
  return data.items;
}

Note: The Search API has rate limits (10 requests/minute unauthenticated, 30/minute with token).

Next.js API Route (Server-Side Scraping)

// app/api/trending/route.ts
import { NextRequest } from 'next/server';
import * as cheerio from 'cheerio';

export async function GET(request: NextRequest) {
  const searchParams = request.nextUrl.searchParams;
  const language = searchParams.get('language') || '';
  const since = searchParams.get('since') || 'daily';

  try {
    let url = 'https://github.com/trending';
    if (language) url += `/${encodeURIComponent(language)}`;
    url += `?since=${since}`;

    const response = await fetch(url, {
      headers: { 'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible)' },
      next: { revalidate: 3600 }, // Cache for 1 hour
    });

    const html = await response.text();
    const repos = parseGitHubTrending(html);
    
    return Response.json(repos);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Trending scrape failed:', error);
    return Response.json(
      { error: 'Failed to fetch trending repos' },
      { status: 500 }
    );
  }
}

function parseGitHubTrending(html: string) {
  const $ = cheerio.load(html);
  const repos: any[] = [];

  $('article.Box-row').each((_, el) => {
    const $el = $(el);
    const repoLink = $el.find('h2 a').attr('href') || '';
    const [, owner, name] = repoLink.split('/');
    
    repos.push({
      owner,
      name,
      fullName: `${owner}/${name}`,
      url: `https://github.com${repoLink}`,
      description: $el.find('p.col-9').text().trim(),
      language: $el.find('[itemprop="programmingLanguage"]').text().trim(),
      stars: parseNumber($el.find('a[href$="/stargazers"]').text()),
      forks: parseNumber($el.find('a[href$="/forks"]').text()),
      starsToday: parseNumber($el.find('.float-sm-right').text()),
    });
  });

  return repos;
}

function parseNumber(text: string): number {
  const clean = text.replace(/,/g, '').trim();
  if (clean.includes('k')) return Math.round(parseFloat(clean) * 1000);
  return parseInt(clean) || 0;
}

React Hook

import { useState, useEffect } from 'react';

function useTrending(options: { language?: string; since?: string } = {}) {
  const [repos, setRepos] = useState([]);
  const [isLoading, setIsLoading] = useState(true);
  const [error, setError] = useState<string | null>(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    async function fetchTrending() {
      setIsLoading(true);
      try {
        const params = new URLSearchParams();
        if (options.language) params.set('language', options.language);
        if (options.since) params.set('since', options.since);

        const response = await fetch(`/api/trending?${params}`);
        if (!response.ok) throw new Error('Failed to fetch');
        setRepos(await response.json());
      } catch (err) {
        setError(err instanceof Error ? err.message : 'Unknown error');
      } finally {
        setIsLoading(false);
      }
    }

    fetchTrending();
  }, [options.language, options.since]);

  return { repos, isLoading, error };
}

Important Considerations

  • No Official API: GitHub's trending page has no official API - scraping is the only option
  • Rate Limiting: Respect GitHub's servers - cache aggressively
  • HTML Structure Changes: GitHub may change their HTML - monitor for breakages
  • User-Agent: Always include a User-Agent header
  • Server-Side Only: Do scraping server-side to avoid CORS issues

Resources

  • GitHub Trending Page: https://github.com/trending
  • GitHub Search API: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/search

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take hoodini/github-trending from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.