How does OctoCounts count source lines of code?

OctoCounts resolves a public GitHub ref to a commit SHA, downloads the source archive, extracts it, runs tokei, and caches the resulting language statistics by repository, commit, tokei version, and analysis options.

Why does OctoCounts use archive downloads instead of git clone?

Archive downloads fetch the source tree for one ref without transferring full git history. This is faster for quick repository inspection and keeps reports pinned to a reproducible commit.

Are OctoCounts reports exact?

OctoCounts reports are exact for the downloaded source archive and selected analysis options. They are not a measure of git history, generated artifacts excluded by settings, private code, or files unavailable in the public archive.

Updated July 6, 2026

OctoCounts Methodology

OctoCounts counts public GitHub repository source trees at a pinned ref. It does not clone full git history, does not request account access, and does not analyze private repositories.

Counting Pipeline

Validate: OctoCounts accepts public github.com repository URLs only.
Resolve: The requested branch, tag, or commit SHA is resolved to a pinned commit SHA.
Download: The backend downloads the GitHub source archive for that exact ref.
Extract: The archive is unpacked into a temporary workspace.
Count: tokei detects languages and counts files, total lines, code lines, comments, and blank lines.
Cache: The report is stored by repository, commit SHA, tokei version, and analysis options.

Cache Key

Reports are cached by repository provider, owner, repository name, commit SHA, tokei version, and active analysis options. Repeated requests for the same commit and options return the cached report instead of downloading and counting again.

Default Exclusions

OctoCounts skips heavy dependency and build folders by default so counts represent the source tree rather than installed dependencies or generated output.

.cache
.git
.next
build
dist
node_modules
target
vendor

Metrics

Metric	Definition
Files	Files detected by tokei as source or supported text formats.
Total lines	Code lines + comment lines + blank lines.
Code lines	Language-parser-recognized source code lines.
Comments	Line and block comments recognized by language rules.
Blanks	Whitespace-only lines.
Languages	Detected programming languages and file types, sorted by code lines.

Limitations

OctoCounts analyzes public GitHub repositories only.
Counts reflect the source archive at one commit, not the full repository history.
Generated files, dependency folders, docs, tests, and ignored languages may be included or excluded depending on analysis options.
Language classification follows tokei's rules and supported file types.
GitHub repositories that are empty, private, unavailable, or too large may fail analysis.

Recommended Citation

As of {date} (commit {sha}), {owner}/{repo} contains {total_lines} total lines: {code_lines} code, {comment_lines} comments, {blank_lines} blank, across {file_count} files in {language_count} languages. Counted with tokei via OctoCounts.

Every cached report page includes its own generated citation text. Prefer citing the canonical report URL, for example https://octocounts.com/github/torvalds/linux.