GitHub Trending Analyzer

A workflow protocol for tracking GitHub trending repositories with LLM-powered analysis. Fetches trending projects, enriches each with structured Chinese insights (what/analogy/help/who), classifies by themes, compares against historical snapshots, and generates reports in two modes — a compact brief (default) or a detailed report with per-project analysis (opt-in).

Trigger Signals

• GitHub trending analysis
• Weekly tech trend report
• Repository discovery automation
• Incremental analysis refresh
• Theme-based repo categorization

Preconditions

• HTTP access to github.com/trending (no auth required for public trending)
• LLM backend capable of JSON-structured output (for the 4-field analysis schema)
• File system access for memory cache and report output
• HTML parsing capability (regex or DOM parser)

Strategy

Run the five-step pipeline in order.

Step 1: Fetch trending HTML

Construct the URL with time range and optional language filter:

https://github.com/trending[/{language}]?since={daily|weekly|monthly}

Fetch with a browser User-Agent to avoid bot detection. Parse the HTML to extract:

• name (org/repo)
• url (full GitHub link)
• desc (one-line description from the page)
• lang (primary language)
• stars (total stargazers count)
• today_stars (increment for this period)

Regex patterns (reference from source):

• Project name: <h2[^>]*>.*?<a href="/([^"]+)"
• Description: <p class="[^"]*col-9[^"]*"[^>]*>\s*(.*?)\s*</p>
• Language: <span itemprop="programmingLanguage">([^<]+)</span>
• Stars: parse from /stargazers link text after stripping HTML tags
• Today increment: ([\d,]+)\s*stars?\s*(?:this|today) (case-insensitive)

Step 2: Batch LLM analysis

For each batch of 5 projects (to avoid token limits), send this prompt to your LLM:

Analyze the following {N} GitHub Trending projects. Output strict JSON array.
Each project needs 4 fields:
- what: What it is (≤30 Chinese characters)
- analogy: Life analogy (one sentence)
- help: What it helps you do (2 items, each ≤40 chars, array)
- who: Who needs it (one sentence, ≤30 chars)

Project list:
1. org/repo (Language) — description...
2. ...

Output ONLY the JSON array, no other text. Example:
[{"name":"org/repo","what":"...","analogy":"...","help":["...","..."],"who":"..."}]

Parse the response:

1. Strip markdown code fences (```json / ```)
2. Clean trailing commas: ,\s*([\]}]) → \1
3. Extract the JSON array via regex: \[.*\] (DOTALL)
4. Decode with json.loads() or equivalent
5. Match results back to projects by name suffix (case-insensitive)

Fallback: If array parsing fails, extract individual objects via bracket-counting and parse one by one.

Deep mode (optional): Use longer limits (what ≤50 chars, help 3 items) for richer analysis.

Step 3: Theme classification

Load the bundled theme_rules.json. For each project:

1. Concatenate name + " " + desc and lowercase
2. Iterate themes by priority order
3. Check if any keyword from the theme appears in the text
4. Assign to first matching theme
5. Default to "🌐 其他" if no match

Result: {theme_name: [projects...]} dictionary.

Step 4: Compute diff (optional)

Load memory.json from the workspace root (see Output Protocol). Schema:

[
  {
    "date": "2026-06-19",
    "since": "weekly",
    "lang": "python",
    "repos": [{"name":"...", "url":"...", "desc":"...", "lang":"...", "stars":..., "today_stars":..., "analysis":{...}}]
  }
]

Compare current repos against the latest entry with the same since (and same lang filter):

• new: projects in current but not in last
• hot: projects in both
• dropped: projects in last but not in current
• last_date: baseline timestamp

Step 5: Generate reports

Two report modes, driven by the bundled templates:

• Brief (default): report_template_brief.md — stops at "💡 Trend Analysis". Always emitted.
• Detailed (opt-in): report_template_detailed.md — the brief content plus a per-project "📋 Project Details" section with the 4-field analysis. Emitted only when the user asks for detail (or when deep analysis was run).

Trend insight prompt (used in the "Trend Analysis" section of both modes):

基于以下GitHub Trending项目摘要，用3-5句话分析当前最强技术趋势和驱动力：
{list of "name: what" for all projects}

Save under reports/YYYY-MM-DD/ with a {since} suffix (daily / weekly / monthly), e.g. trending_briefing_weekly.md. Same-day re-runs of the same since+lang overwrite that report.

Empty tables: when a section (new/hot/dropped) has no rows, render the table header followed by a single *none* row; keep "Theme Breakdown" and "Trend Analysis" only if there are classified projects. On a first run (no memory baseline), omit the "Dropped Off" section rather than showing it empty.

Constraints

Core rules

1. Batch size = 5 for LLM calls to avoid truncation. For 20 repos, make 4 separate calls.
2. JSON-only LLM output. The prompt explicitly forbids explanatory text. Parse defensively (strip fences, clean commas).
3. Name matching is fuzzy. Match by suffix (org/repo vs repo) and case-insensitive substring.
4. Theme priority matters. A project matching both "AI" and "Dev Tools" gets classified as "AI" (priority 1 < 4).
5. Memory and daily repo JSON are upserted, not blindly overwritten or appended. Key is (date, since, lang). Same-key re-runs merge; other keys are added. Retain the 30 most recent distinct dates.

Incremental modes (optional)

• Gap-fill mode: Load the matching memory entry (same date+since+lang, else latest with same since+lang) → detect repos without analysis → re-run LLM only for those → merge back into both memory.json and repos/YYYY-MM-DD_repos.json → regenerate reports.
• Selective re-analysis: User specifies project names (comma-separated, partial match) → find matching repos in memory → re-run LLM with optional deep mode → merge into memory and the day's repos JSON → regenerate reports.

Implementation hint: detect_gaps(repos) returns [r for r in repos if not r.get('analysis')].

Error handling

• HTML fetch fails: Retry once with 5s delay, then abort with clear error message.
• LLM returns non-JSON: Log warning, continue with raw description as fallback for that batch.
• Memory file missing: Treat as first run (no diff section in reports).

Output Protocol

Write all artifacts under the current working directory (the consuming workspace). Never write into the skill package.

<cwd>/
├── repos/YYYY-MM-DD_repos.json
├── reports/YYYY-MM-DD/trending_briefing_{since}[_{lang}].md
├── reports/YYYY-MM-DD/trending_detailed_{since}[_{lang}].md   # opt-in
└── memory.json

{since} is daily | weekly | monthly. Append _{lang} only when a language filter was used (python, go, …). Date lives in the reports folder — do not repeat it in the report filename.

Create repos/ and reports/YYYY-MM-DD/ if missing. Same-day re-runs of the same since+lang overwrite that report file.

repos/YYYY-MM-DD_repos.json

Day-level crawl cache. Incremental merge on every run:

{
  "date": "2026-08-19",
  "updated_at": "2026-08-19T16:45:00+08:00",
  "snapshots": [
    {
      "since": "daily",
      "lang": "",
      "fetched_at": "2026-08-19T16:45:00+08:00",
      "repos": [{"name":"...","url":"...","desc":"...","lang":"...","stars":0,"today_stars":0,"analysis":{}}]
    }
  ]
}

Merge rules:

1. Load the file if it exists; otherwise start {date, updated_at, snapshots: []}.
2. Upsert the snapshot whose (since, lang) matches this run (lang is "" when unfiltered).
3. Matching repos (case-insensitive name): overwrite crawl fields (url, desc, lang, stars, today_stars); keep existing analysis unless this run produced a new one.
4. Repos only in the new fetch are appended; repos only in the old snapshot are kept (a later since on the same day must not wipe another window).
5. Write atomically (temp file in the same directory, then replace).

memory.json

Workspace-root history used by Step 4 diffs and gap-fill. Incremental merge:

1. Load the array if the file exists; missing or empty → first run (no diff / no Dropped Off).
2. Upsert by (date, since, lang). Same key: apply the same per-repo merge as the day cache. New key: append.
3. After upsert, keep entries whose date is among the 30 most recent distinct dates (so one day with daily+weekly+monthly does not evict history).
4. Write atomically.

Reports

1. Brief (default) (reports/{date}/trending_briefing_{since}[_{lang}].md): new/hot/dropped/themes + trend insight. Stops at "Trend Analysis" — no per-project blocks.
2. Detailed (opt-in) (reports/{date}/trending_detailed_{since}[_{lang}].md): brief content followed by one "📋 Project Details" block per project with the 4-field analysis. Only when the user requests detail.

Console output during execution:

• "Fetching {since} trending..." → "Got {N} projects"
• "LLM batch {i}/{total}..." → "✅ Batch complete: {n} items"
• "💾 Repos merged: {path}"
• "💾 Memory merged: {path}"
• "📄 Brief saved: {path}"
• "📄 Detailed saved: {path}" (only when detailed mode runs)
• (Gap-fill) "Coverage: {covered}/{total} ({pct}%)"

Validation

Before emitting reports, confirm:

• All repos have name, url, desc, lang, stars, today_stars fields.
• At least one theme contains projects (not all "其他").
• LLM analysis covers ≥50% of projects (log warning if lower).
• Emitted report files are valid UTF-8 Markdown at the paths above.
• YYYY-MM-DD_repos.json and memory.json reload without error after the merge.

Adapting and Extending

Custom themes

Edit the bundled theme_rules.json:

• Add new themes with emoji prefix and priority
• Extend keyword lists for existing themes
• Adjust priority order to prefer certain classifications

Alternative LLM schemas

The 4-field schema (what/analogy/help/who) is optimized for Chinese tech audiences. Adapt for other contexts:

• English reports: Change field names and prompt language
• Different insights: Replace "analogy" with "use cases" or "risks"
• Richer detail: Increase char limits in deep mode

Different trending sources

The HTML parsing patterns are GitHub-specific. To adapt for other platforms (Hacker News, Product Hunt):

• Replace Step 1 fetch logic
• Adjust regex patterns for that site's DOM structure
• Keep Steps 2-5 unchanged (LLM + themes + diff + reports)

Memory backends

The reference uses local JSON. For multi-agent or cloud deployments:

• Swap load_memory() / save_memory() with a DB or object storage client
• Maintain the same list-of-dicts schema
• Add concurrency locks if multiple agents run in parallel