# sindresorhus/awesome: a hand-kept index of 26 category lists with its intake paused > The longest lived list of lists, now a readme of links grouped into 26 hand-maintained categories and little else. Good for deciding where to look, silent on whether what you find there is current, comparable, or licensed the way you assumed. **sindresorhus/awesome** — 😎 Awesome lists about all kinds of interesting topics [NOTE: Pull requests are temporarily disabled until I have a chance to catch up with the existing ones] - Repository: https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome - Stars: 511,903 · Forks: 37,151 - Language: Unknown - License: CC0-1.0 - Published: 2026-09-10 · Updated: 2026-09-10 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/sindresorhus-awesome ## Pull requests are disabled until the existing backlog is cleared The repository description carries a bracketed note in its own text: pull requests are temporarily disabled until the maintainer has a chance to catch up with the existing ones. The queue, not the policy, is the bottleneck. Every change a reader might want, a new list, a renamed repository, a dead link, a duplicate, routes through that one door, and the door is shut. The machinery for intake is all still in the tree: a pull request template, a contribution guide, a code of conduct, and a .github directory. Consequence for the reader: the index can only be corrected one backlog at a time, and the readme gives no count of what is pending and no date for when intake reopens. A would-be contributor who follows the contribution guide lands on documented steps for a process that is not accepting input. ## The Contents block is 26 hand-written anchor links, not a generated index The readme opens with a Contents block that names 26 sections in a fixed order: Platforms, Programming Languages, Front-End Development, Back-End Development, Computer Science, Big Data, Theory, Books, Editors, Gaming, Development Environment, Entertainment, Databases, Media, Learn, Security, Content Management Systems, Hardware, Business, Work, Networking, Decentralized Systems, Health and Social Science, Events, Testing, Miscellaneous, and Related. Each line is a hand-maintained link to a heading in the same file. Nothing generates it, so introducing a category means editing a list a person keeps by hand, and a heading that gets reworded breaks the anchor pointing at it. The readme sets out no criteria for what earns a new top-level section and no minimum entry count for one, so coverage reflects editorial choices rather than a stated rule. Consequence for the reader: the table of contents tells you a section exists, not how much is in it. ## Every entry is one borrowed sentence, so entry length tracks nothing Under Platforms, each line is a link plus a single sentence taken from the list it points to. Node.js is described as an async non-blocking event-driven JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized computer aimed at teaching kids programming, but capable of a lot more. Heroku is a cloud platform as a service. Salesforce, Cordova, JVM, and .NET appear with no description at all. One line slot carries a language runtime, a cloud platform, a mobile operating system, and a computer the size of a card, so the sentences differ in length by an order of magnitude and the information they carry is not comparable. Consequence for the reader: the index cannot be used to choose between two entries, and the only signal available is whatever the sub-project put in its own opening paragraph. Clicking is the only way to learn more, and each click is another hop toward a different author with a different update rhythm. ## Two hops out, with no snapshot of what you find there The readme names one destination for itself: type awesome.re in a browser to get there. From that page, each of the 26 sections links to a separate repository, and those repositories link onward in turn. Nothing in this repository records a commit, a date, or a copy of what a linked list said on the day the link was added. The only change feed the page links is its own commits atom URL, which reports edits to this readme and says nothing about the state of the destinations. Consequence for the reader: a link that resolves today can point to a renamed repository, a private project, or a deleted file tomorrow, and the index will keep pointing at it. A sub-list that stalls can sit in a section for years with no per-entry date to warn you. When you rely on a pointer from here, check the destination yourself before planning around it. ## CC0 covers the index text, not the 26 projects it points at The repository is licensed CC0-1.0, a public domain dedication applied to the list this project maintains. The top level of the tree is short and entirely editorial: an editor config, a gitattributes file, a .github directory, awesome.md, code-of-conduct.md, contributing.md, create-list.md, the license file, a media directory, a pull request template, and readme.md. There is no package manifest, no lockfile, and no recorded primary language, so there is nothing to install, nothing to import, and no published package to depend on. Consequence for the reader: the CC0 grant covers the text of the index and nothing else. It grants no permission over the projects behind the links, and the substance anyone wants, the actual guidance, lives in a sub-list under its own terms. Republishing a curated selection from here turns into a licensing decision about 26 separate projects, and this repository cannot settle it for you. ## No releases and no changelog, so a snapshot is a commit hash The repository has no GitHub releases, and the default branch is main. The last push is dated 2026-09-02 and the project is not archived, so the file is still being edited rather than left standing as a monument. What it offers instead of versioned artifacts is documentation written for list authors rather than for consumers: a page defining what an awesome list is, a guide for creating a list, and a contribution guide, each living in its own markdown file whose text is not reproduced in the readme. Consequence for the reader: if you mirror the index, there is no release to pin and no changelog to diff, so two mirrors taken on different days disagree with no marker saying which is the corrected one. Anyone starting a new list has to fetch those three files separately, and nothing in the readme states the current bar for acceptance. ## What the index cannot tell you before you click Three things this project does not do. It does not verify that a link still resolves or that the linked list is still maintained, and it has no per-entry field in which to say so. It does not rank, score, annotate, or date entries, so a section such as Security, which points at lists about security, gives you no way to tell a list touched last month from one that stopped three years ago. It does not carry the substance you came for: install commands, supported versions, license terms, and platform requirements live in the destination and can change without any edit here. Consequence for the reader: treat this as a directory of directories, useful for deciding where to look, and make the second and third click yourself. The cost of that model is that every answer you reach through it is one hop older and one maintainer less accountable than the list you started from. ## Conclusion Use sindresorhus/awesome as a directory of directories. It is the cheapest way to find the single list that covers a field you are not expert in, and its 26 sections are broad enough that your field almost certainly sits under one of them. Do not treat it as a curated answer, because it cannot rank, date, or verify its own entries, and the pull request queue that would fix a stale link is paused while the maintainer catches up. Before you plan anything around a pointer from here, open the destination yourself and check three things: when it was last updated, what license the linked project actually carries, and whether the install path it gives still matches your platform. ## FAQ ### What does "awesome" mean? Inside this repository the word names a category of document rather than an intensifier. The readme links to a separate file under the anchor text What is an awesome list?, and that definition is not reproduced in the page, so the authoritative sense of the word lives in awesome.md. ### What is a better word than awesome? Nothing in the repository addresses that question. The word appears in three roles only: the list name itself, the link text What is an awesome list?, and the awesome.re domain the readme tells readers to type. ### how to install awesome copilot There is nothing to install. The top level holds an editor config, a gitattributes file, a .github directory, awesome.md, code-of-conduct.md, contributing.md, create-list.md, a license file, a media directory, a pull request template, and readme.md, with no package manifest and no recorded primary language. ### how to use awesome The readme gives one instruction: type awesome.re in a browser to reach the list. The only update channel it links is an RSS feed of commits for the repository itself, and the three guides aimed at authors sit in separate files. ### how to use awesome screenshot The repository holds a media directory at the top level and a Media section in its Contents block, and neither covers screenshot tooling. Nothing in the tree is an application you install and run; the only instruction the readme gives is to type awesome.re in a browser. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/issues) - [License: CC0-1.0](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/main/LICENSE) - [README](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome/blob/main/README.md) - [sindresorhus/awesome on GitHub](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/sindresorhus-awesome