Killed by Me
Every side project you abandoned on GitHub, finally given the funeral it never got. Type a username — yours, a friend’s, your favourite maintainer’s.
Even legends leave bodies
Everyone who ships abandons far more than they ship. A snapshot of some well-known graveyards, taken 2026-09-23 — public repos, plus private ones where someone has added their own. Click a name for the live version.
| Who | Killed | Median life | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linus Torvalds@torvalds | 3 / 9 | 12 months | The Gardener |
| Himanshu Srivastava@himanshuSri24 | 66 / 101incl. 67 private | less than a day | The Necromancer |
| dan@gaearon | 53 / 61 | 8 months | The Long Goodbye |
| Sindre Sorhus@sindresorhus | 501 / 990 | 8 years | The Necromancer |
| Andrej@karpathy | 44 / 54 | 14 months | The Long Goodbye |
| Salvatore Sanfilippo@antirez | 79 / 102 | 3 weeks | The Gravedigger |
| TJ@tj | 214 / 219 | 23 months | The Long Goodbye |
| Evan You@yyx990803 | 74 / 75 | 3 months | The Long Goodbye |
| levelsio@levelsio | 0 / 2 | 4 months | The Cautious |
| Kent C. Dodds@kentcdodds | 375 / 403 | 3 years | The Long Goodbye |
| Mitchell Hashimoto@mitchellh | 97 / 106 | 15 months | The Long Goodbye |
| shadcn@shadcn | 143 / 149 | 1 day | Mass Extinction Event |
| ThePrimeagen@ThePrimeagen | 176 / 194 | 9 days | The Gravedigger |
| Theo Browne@t3dotgg | 95 / 102 | 2 days | Mass Extinction Event |
| Addy Osmani@addyosmani | 161 / 185 | 11 days | The Gravedigger |
| Guillermo Rauch@rauchg | 57 / 65 | 2 months | The Gravedigger |
| Kyle Simpson@getify | 65 / 71 | 16 months | The Long Goodbye |
Why this exists
I scanned every project on my own disk and found the median one lived nine days. My public GitHub is worse: the median repo lasted two days, and fifteen of them died the day they were created. I don’t think that’s a character flaw. Most side projects are questions, and most questions get answered in a weekend.
But it is funny, and it turns out almost everyone who ships a lot has the same graveyard. The difference is only whether anyone counts. So now anyone can.
Frequently asked
What counts as a dead project?
A public repository you created that has not had a push in over a year. No push in three months counts as dying. Archived repos are counted as properly buried, and forks are left out entirely — you can't kill something that was never yours.
Is my data stored or sent anywhere?
For public repos, no. Your browser asks GitHub's public API for the list and does all the counting itself; this site never sees the request. The only thing ever stored is the anonymous private-repo summary described below, and only if you sign in and ask for it.
How do private repos stay private?
Signing in installs a GitHub App whose only permission is read-only repository metadata, so it cannot read a line of code. The server reads your repo list once, keeps just the dates, language, size and a few counts for each private repo, and revokes the sign-in token immediately. Names, descriptions and topics are thrown away, so on your page and your share card they appear only as 'Private project #7'. Remove them any time from your page, and uninstall the app from GitHub's settings if you want it gone entirely.
Why does it say GitHub's limit is used up?
GitHub allows 60 unauthenticated requests an hour per network. One graveyard costs two requests for most people, a few more for someone with hundreds of repos. On a shared office or university network other people may have spent the allowance; it resets within the hour.
How is the lifespan measured?
From the moment the repository was created to its most recent push. The median is the middle value across all your repos, so a single long-running project can't hide a hundred abandoned ones — which is exactly why the number is uncomfortable.
Are the epitaphs random?
No. Each one is chosen from what is true about the repository — how long it lived, whether it had a description, its stars, its open issues, its name — and the same repository always gets the same one.
Built by Himanshu Srivastava — verdict: Serial Starter. This one he intends to keep alive. Inspired, with love, by Killed by Google. More in the tools collection.