Bus Factor Analysis of Open-Source LLM Assistant Projects
Check the bus factor table to spot projects with a single contributor and high commit counts, then decide whether to contribute or fork.
Review the bus factor data for projects you rely on and plan to contribute to those with a single contributor.
Summary
The author compiled a bus‑factor analysis of a wide range of open‑source LLM assistant projects, using commit counts as the sole metric. The data, presented in a Reddit post, includes a table of active repos such as picoclaw, QwenPaw, zeroclaw, nanobot, ironclaw, nanoclaw, agent‑zero, openclaw, hermes‑agent, moltis, nullclaw, AstrBot, angel‑claw, moxxy, troublemaker, zeptoclaw, and microclaw, with bus factors ranging from 1 to 15 and top authors contributing between 7.6 % and 91.6 % of commits. The author also lists a separate table of dead projects that collapsed in April, including hermitclaw, mimiclaw, pickle‑bot, safeclaw, lettabot, Clawlet, subzeroclaw, atombot, autobot, babyclaw, droidclaw, picobot, shrew, supaclaw, tinyclaw, and zclaw, all showing zero or near‑zero commits in April. Commit counts for February, March, and April are shown for each repo, highlighting sharp declines for many projects. The script generating the data was instructed via Claude, and the author notes that the definition of bus factor used is the minimum number of contributors whose combined commits account for more than half of the project's history. The post emphasizes that many projects have a single dominant contributor, raising concerns about maintainability and risk. The author presents the data as a Reddit discussion, inviting readers to evaluate the health of these assistant projects. The analysis underscores the importance of contributor diversity for long‑term project sustainability.
Key changes
- The analysis covers 18 active repos with bus factors from 1 to 15, top authors contributing 7.6 % to 91.6 % of commits.
- Openclaw has a single top author, Peter Steinberger, with 58.8 % of commits and 14,586 commits in April.
- The dead projects table lists 16 repos that collapsed in April, all with zero commits in April.
- Commit counts for Feb, Mar, Apr show a decline for many projects, e.g., hermitclaw dropped from 44 to 0.
- The script used Claude to generate the bus‑factor data and relies solely on commit counts.
- The bus‑factor definition used is the minimum number of contributors whose combined commits exceed half the project's history.
- The analysis highlights that several projects have a single contributor, indicating high risk.
- The author invites readers to assess the health of these projects and consider contributing to those with low bus factors.