# 996.ICU: what the repository actually contains, and how to use it > 996.ICU is a protest repository about the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-day work schedule in Chinese tech. It is not software you install. It is a set of Markdown lists, a licence draft and a website, and its value depends on whether you need a campaign record or a piece of code. **996icu/996.ICU** — GitHub describes it as Repo for counting stars and contributing. Press F to pay respect to glorious developers.. The metadata lists the NOASSERTION license. This article stays within the project description and details documented in the GitHub repository README. - Repository: https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU - Website: https://996.icu - Stars: 277,245 · Forks: 20,701 - Language: Unknown - License: NOASSERTION - Published: 2026-08-13 · Updated: 2026-08-18 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/996icu-996-icu ## What 996.ICU is, and the problem it names The name is a pun. The README explains that `996.ICU` means "Work by '996', sick in ICU", an ironic saying among Chinese developers: follow the 996 schedule and you risk ending up in an intensive care unit. The schedule itself is defined in the README as an unofficial arrangement of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week, which the README says usually means at least 60 hours per week. The repository is not a library, a CLI or a service. It is a campaign record. The README lists what a reader can do: update the blacklist with evidence, add a badge to a project, license a project under the Anti-996 License, add proposals, and, in the README's own words, "Go home at 6 pm without feeling sorry." The audience is developers and anyone documenting the working conditions of Chinese technology companies. If you arrived looking for a package to install, you are in the wrong repository, and the README never pretends otherwise. ## How the repository is organised: lists, translations, proposals, licences The top-level entries tell you the shape of the project. There are directories for `blacklist/`, `whitelist/`, `awesomelist/`, `remotelist/`, `proposal/`, `i18n/`, `externals/` and `archived/`, plus `README.md`, `README_CN.md`, `LICENSE`, `LICENSE_CN`, `logo.svg` and a file named `ANTI-996 DAY.MD`. The data flow is editorial, not programmatic. A contributor adds a company and supporting evidence to the blacklist, or a project to the awesomelist of works released under the Anti-996 License. Translations live under `i18n/`, and the README asks contributors to translate contents, adjust formatting and fix grammatical errors, while warning that "adding too many translations is getting off the track." The README also links a set of sibling projects, including 955.WLB for a work-life balance whitelist, 996.LIST for a ranked list, 996.Leave for working overseas, and 996.Blockchain for storing evidence on a chain. One structural decision matters more than the rest: the issues area is closed. The README states that even with interaction limits on, the issues area was "totally out of control", and that the maintainer personally decided to switch it off, not GitHub. That removes the main channel through which a repository like this normally receives corrections. Proposals go to `proposal/README.md` instead. ## Cloning the repository and reading the blacklist There is no install step, because there is no software. The README points readers at the official domain `https://996.icu` and at this repository, and states that no other official account, app or merchandise exists. Getting the material means cloning it and reading Markdown. ```bash git clone https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU.git cd 996.ICU ``` After the clone finishes you have the directory tree described above. The two files most readers want first are the English and Chinese READMEs, and the blacklist. ```bash ls sed -n '1,40p' blacklist/README.md ``` The `ls` output should match the top-level entries listed earlier: `blacklist`, `whitelist`, `awesomelist`, `proposal`, `i18n`, `externals`, `archived`, `LICENSE`, `LICENSE_CN`, `README.md`, `README_CN.md`, `logo.svg` and `ANTI-996 DAY.MD`. The second command prints the beginning of the blacklist so you can see how entries and their evidence are formatted before you cite or extend them. If you want to support the campaign from your own project, the README points to `externals/instruction.md` for the badge. If you want to license a project under the Anti-996 License, the README says the draft is adapted from the MIT license and that a fuller explanation lives in the wiki at `kattgu7/996-License-Draft`. The README also notes the draft is designed to be compatible with all major open source licenses, which is a claim to verify with your own counsel rather than take on faith. ## The Anti-996 License is a draft, and that is a real limitation The licence is the part of this repository most likely to be adopted by other projects, and it is the part with the most caveats. The README calls it a draft adapted from MIT, states its purpose as preventing anti-labour-law companies from using software under the licence, and directs law professionals and future contributors to a separate repository, `kattgu7/996-License-Draft`, for `Anti-996-License-1.0`. Nothing in the README describes how a dispute over the labour-law condition would be adjudicated, which jurisdiction's labour law applies, or what happens when a company is accused without a finding. The repository's own `LICENSE` file is the authority, not the README summary, and the README does not document a rollback path for a project that adopts the licence and later wants out. For a compliance-sensitive codebase, that silence is the deciding fact. The licence is a statement, and statements are cheap to make and expensive to enforce. The repository's licence metadata is listed as NOASSERTION, meaning GitHub's tooling could not classify it automatically. That is consistent with a custom draft rather than a standard licence, and it is a signal to read the file rather than trust a badge. ## Where 996.ICU is the wrong tool If your goal is to check whether a specific employer is currently on a list, this repository is a poor instrument. The blacklist is maintained by contributors with evidence, and the README itself notes, in the context of one company's denial, that leaders "never leave evidences when asking employees to work as '996'." A list built on volunteered evidence will always lag reality and will skew toward companies whose employees are willing to speak. If your goal is legal advice about whether a schedule is lawful, the repository does not provide it. The README states the initiative "firmly uphold[s] the labor law" and requests employers to respect employees' rights, but it does not analyse statutes, and it says the project "is not a political movement." Treat it as a campaign archive, not a legal reference. If your goal is a maintained data source with an API, look elsewhere. The issues area is closed by the maintainer's own decision, so corrections have no obvious public queue, and the README does not document a review process for blacklist edits beyond the instruction to add evidence. A dataset whose correction path is a pull request against a repository with no issue tracker is a dataset you should treat as a snapshot. ## Alternatives: 955.WLB and the sibling lists The README's own community section is the most honest comparison available, because the alternatives come from the same movement and differ in approach rather than in topic. 955.WLB maintains a whitelist of companies with 955 work-life balance, the inverse of a blacklist: instead of naming employers to avoid, it names employers to consider. That changes the failure mode. A whitelist is easier to keep defensible because inclusion is a positive claim about a company's schedule, but it is also easier to game and it tells you nothing about the companies that are absent. 996.LIST takes a third approach, ranking 996 and 955 companies together. 996.Leave takes a different route entirely: rather than changing conditions in place, it introduces working overseas. 996.Blockchain proposes storing evidence on a chain, which addresses the tamper-resistance problem the blacklist has but adds the question of who controls the chain and how a hash of an accusation is verified. None of these is a superset of 996.ICU. The blacklist is the adversarial record; the whitelist is the positive one; the licence is the mechanism that tries to put pressure on employers through software distribution. ## Maintenance, licensing and what to verify The repository is not archived, but no last push date is available, so there is no basis for describing it as actively maintained. Judge its currency from the contents you clone: press coverage cited in the README dates from 2019, and the README references an archived copy of 996.rip from April 2019. Treat the lists as historical records unless you can see recent commits yourself. Upgrade cost is close to zero in the software sense, because there is no dependency to bump. The cost is editorial: if you fork the blacklist or the licence text, you own the accuracy of every entry you keep. The README states that translations should be contributed to `i18n/` and warns against over-translating, which suggests the maintainers prefer a small, accurate set over broad coverage. On licensing, the repository's own code and text are covered by the Anti-996 License, and the README describes that licence as a draft. If you plan to place your own project under it, read `LICENSE` and `LICENSE_CN` in full, and note that the README points to a separate repository for the future 1.0 version. This is not legal advice; a licence whose central clause is a labour condition is exactly the kind of text a lawyer should read before you ship. ## Conclusion Adopt 996.ICU as a reference set if you are writing about labour conditions in Chinese tech, translating campaign material, or studying how the Anti-996 License draft adapts MIT terms into a labour condition. Do not treat it as a software dependency: there is nothing to build, and the licence draft is explicitly described as a draft with a separate repository for future versions. Before citing anything, open blacklist/README.md and check whether the entry you want to quote carries evidence, and read LICENSE and LICENSE_CN yourself rather than relying on summaries. The repository also states that the official domain and this repository are the only official presence, so anything else claiming to be 996.ICU is not. ## FAQ ### What is 996.ICU? It is a repository and campaign against the 996 work schedule, defined in the README as 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week. The name is a pun: "Work by '996', sick in ICU." The repository collects a blacklist, a whitelist, translations, proposals and an Anti-996 License draft. ### What does 996 stand for? In the README, 996 refers to an unofficial work schedule of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week, which it says usually means at least 60 hours per week. The README links the Wikipedia article on the 996 working hour system for more detail. ### Is 996 illegal in China? The repository does not analyse Chinese law. Its stated position is that the initiative "firmly uphold[s] the labor law" and requests employers to respect employees' legitimate rights and interests. For a legal answer, this repository is not the source. ### Is 996 illegal in the USA? Nothing in the repository discusses United States law. The README frames the initiative around Chinese developers and the labor law, and explicitly says it is not a political movement. The repository cannot answer this question. ### What is 996 and 007? The README defines only 996: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week. It does not mention 007 anywhere, so the repository gives no definition for it. ## Sources - [Official documentation](https://996.icu) - [Official README](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU#readme) - [Project repository](https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/996icu-996-icu