explaingit

lowlighter/metrics

16,615JavaScriptAudience · developerComplexity · 2/5Setup · easy

TLDR

Metrics generates visual SVG summaries of your GitHub activity, commit heatmaps, language breakdowns, stargazer maps, and 47-plus other panels, ready to embed in a profile readme or project page.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      GitHub infographics
      SVG image output
      Profile enhancement
    Plugin examples
      Commit heatmap
      Language breakdown
      Stargazer world map
      Lines-of-code history
    Output formats
      SVG
      Markdown
      PDF and JSON
    Use cases
      Profile readmes
      Project dashboards
      Org activity views
    Audience
      Developers
      Open-source maintainers
Click or tap to explore — scroll the page freely

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Embed a 3D isometric commit calendar in your GitHub profile readme so visitors can see your activity at a glance.

USE CASE 2

Add a language-breakdown panel to a project readme showing what the codebase is written in and how much of each.

USE CASE 3

Generate an organisation activity dashboard with contributor stats, issue follow-up panels, and star history charts.

USE CASE 4

Show a world map of where your stargazers come from as part of a public project's community overview.

Tech stack

JavaScriptGitHub ActionsGitHub API

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 30min

Needs a GitHub Actions workflow and a personal access token with the right scopes, no server required.

License information is not mentioned in the explanation.

In plain English

Metrics is an infographics generator for GitHub. It produces visual summaries, most commonly SVG images, that describe activity, statistics, and patterns about a GitHub user, an organization, or even a specific repository. The classic use case is embedding the generated image at the top of your GitHub profile readme so visitors can see, at a glance, things like how active you are, which programming languages you write, who stars your projects, and where in the world they are. The project is built around a plugin system: the README says it ships with more than 47 plugins and around 335 configuration options. Each plugin produces one panel inside the generated image. Examples shown in the README include an isometric commit calendar (a 3D-looking heatmap of your daily commits), a languages-activity panel that can analyze your repositories in depth or look at recent activity, a stargazers panel with line charts and a world map of where people who starred your projects come from, a lines-of-code-changed view with history, a starred-topics and recently-starred-repositories panel, a repository licenses panel showing the permissions and limitations of each license, a coding habits panel with charts and short factual observations, a contributors panel grouped by category or contribution count, a follow-up panel for issues and pull requests, and panels for comment reactions and notable people you interact with. Output can be rendered as SVG, Markdown, PDF, or JSON. Someone would use this to make their GitHub profile more informative or visually distinctive, to share statistics about a project they maintain, or to give an organization a public dashboard of activity. It is a JavaScript project, runs as a GitHub Action (and can also be self-hosted), uses the GitHub API, and is highly configurable through the action's inputs. The full README is longer than what was provided.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I want to add a lowlighter/metrics commit calendar to my GitHub profile readme. Show me the exact GitHub Actions workflow YAML and the Markdown image tag I paste into my README.md.
Prompt 2
How do I configure the languages plugin in lowlighter/metrics to show a detailed breakdown of every repo I own, not just recent activity? Give me the workflow input parameters I need to set.
Prompt 3
I want to display a stargazers world-map panel for my open-source project using lowlighter/metrics. Walk me through setting it up as a self-hosted action on a schedule.
Prompt 4
Generate a combined metrics image for my GitHub profile that includes the isometric calendar, language stats, and recent starred repos, show me the complete workflow config.
Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

← lowlighter on gitmyhub — every repo by this author, as a profile.

Verify against the repo before relying on details.