symfony/thanks
PHP MITGive thanks (in the form of a GitHub ★) to your fellow PHP package maintainers (not limited to Symfony components)!
8.1k
Stars
38
Forks
0
Open issues
5
Contributors
AI Analysis
symfony/thanks is a Composer plugin that automatically stars GitHub repositories of your project's PHP dependencies as a way to show appreciation to package maintainers. It discovers all Composer dependencies, identifies their GitHub repositories, and facilitates starring them with a single command, also allowing package authors to forward thanks to other projects via composer.json configuration.
Inferred from signals mentioned in the README (tests, CI, type safety) — not a review of the actual code.
AI's overall editorial judgment — not an average of the bars above, can weigh other factors too.
Composer plugin that auto-stars GitHub repos of your PHP dependencies as a gesture of appreciation
symfony/thanks is a Composer plugin that, when run, reads your installed PHP dependencies, resolves their GitHub repository URLs, and stars each one on your behalf. It was built for PHP developers who want a quick, low-friction way to show appreciation to open source maintainers. The problem it addresses is purely social: visibility and morale for maintainers, not a technical engineering challenge. It also supports a 'forwarding thanks' mechanism via composer.json extras, letting package authors redirect stars to upstream dependencies.
Created in December 2017 by Nicolas Grekas at SensioLabs, directly inspired by the Rust ecosystem's 'cargo thanks' tool by Doug Tangren. It gained rapid attention by riding the wave of Symfony's large community and a broader OSS appreciation movement in that era.
The project accumulated ~8,000 stars quickly after launch in late 2017, largely driven by Symfony's large community and viral social sharing around the 'thank your maintainers' narrative. Growth has since plateaued — 0 stars in the last 7 days — consistent with a project that had a cultural moment and has since settled into a stable niche utility with an established user base.
The project has 8,086 GitHub stars and is distributed via Packagist as a composer package. Given its nature (a dev-dependency convenience tool), real-world 'production' usage is inherently informal — it is run once or occasionally by developers. No documented enterprise adoption or download statistics are cited in the README. Adoption not verified at scale, but the star count and Symfony ecosystem backing suggest meaningful usage within the PHP community.
Appears to be a Composer plugin (likely implementing Composer's Plugin interface) that hooks into the post-install or post-update lifecycle. It likely queries Packagist or reads installed package metadata to extract GitHub URLs, then calls the GitHub Stars API with a user's OAuth token. Architecture appears intentionally minimal — a single-purpose CLI tool.
not documented in README
Last push was October 30, 2025 — roughly 8 months before the current date of June 2026. This suggests the project is alive and receives occasional maintenance, though it is not under active development. With only 38 forks, contribution activity is likely low but the core functionality is stable and changes infrequently by design.
ADOPT IF: you are a PHP developer who wants a frictionless way to show gratitude to open source maintainers and you don't mind granting GitHub star permissions to the tool. AVOID IF: you have concerns about OAuth scope granting, or if your organization restricts third-party GitHub API integrations — the value is social, not functional. MONITOR IF: GitHub changes its Stars API or authentication model in ways that could break the integration.
Independent dimensions
Mainstream potential
2/10
Technical importance
2/10
Adoption evidence
4/10
- GitHub API changes or deprecations (e.g., OAuth token scopes, rate limits) could break core functionality without warning.
- The project's social value depends on GitHub stars remaining a meaningful signal — if the community depreciates stars as a metric, the tool's purpose weakens.
- Low fork count (38) means community-driven maintenance is minimal; the project's health is tied largely to Nicolas Grekas and Symfony's continued interest.
- Requiring users to grant GitHub API write permissions (for starring) may be a security concern in some organizational contexts.
- Near-zero recent star growth suggests the cultural moment has passed; new developer discovery of this tool may be declining.
symfony/thanks will likely remain a stable, low-maintenance niche utility within the Symfony/PHP ecosystem, receiving only occasional updates to maintain Composer compatibility. It is unlikely to see renewed growth without a new cultural trigger.
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Languages
Information
- Language
- PHP
- License
- MIT
- Last updated
- 8mo ago
- Created
- 104mo ago
- Analyzed with
- anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5
Stars over time
Contributors over time
Top 100 contributors only — repos with more will plateau at 100.
Open issues
No open issues — clean slate.
Open pull requests
No open pull requests.
Top contributors
Recent releases
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The original inspiration for this project. Functionally equivalent for the Rust/Cargo ecosystem. symfony/thanks is the direct PHP port of this concept.
Manually starring repos one-by-one on GitHub is the only true alternative. symfony/thanks automates bulk starring, which is its core value add.
A similar concept exists in the Node.js ecosystem. These tools serve the same cultural purpose in different language ecosystems — not in direct competition.
Composer has no built-in appreciation or star mechanism; symfony/thanks is a pure additive plugin on top of the existing Composer workflow.
