Methodology · vocabulary
Glossary
These terms describe Evidaxis measurements. The latest published snapshot uses m3; historical records retain their own methodology. Each definition names the signal, window, and threshold used to interpret the open data.
Terms on every page
- System
- One open AI project that Evidaxis measures: a code repository, a model or a tool, kept under one record with a stable id. Evidaxis measures systems, never people.
- Niche
- A group of systems that do the same job, such as Coding Agents. Every comparison on the site (niche median, niche medal, Rising) is made inside one niche.
- Field
- A group of related niches, such as AI Agents. A field page lists its niches side by side; it never merges their systems into one list.
- Not yet assigned
- A system that is measured every week but has no niche yet. Until a niche is assigned it has no niche median, no medal and no niche Rising comparison; its own figures are still shown.
- Snapshot
- The weekly, dated record of every measurement, frozen on its date and released under CC0. Every figure on the site belongs to one snapshot, named by its week and date.
- Commits per week
- The average number of commits per week to the system’s GitHub repository over the trailing 12 weeks, from GitHub’s weekly commit activity.
- Citation
- A work in OpenAlex that cites the system’s paper. The count is all citing works indexed to date, all years including the current one. A system with no linked paper has no citation count.
- Verified direct dependent
- A package that depends directly on the system’s package, counted by deps.dev. Evidaxis shows the figure only for packages whose identity is verified as the system’s own; when the trend is not scored yet, the figure is a count only.
- Star
- The GitHub stargazer count. Evidaxis records it and shows it, but never scores it: size is not momentum.
- Not measured / count only
- Not measured: there is no reading for this measure, for example no paper is linked or the package is outside the panel. Count only: the count was measured, but there is not yet enough history or coverage to score its trend; the number is still shown.
- Niche median
- The middle value of one measure among the systems in a niche that have that measure. Systems without the measure are left out, not counted as zero.
- Niche medal
- A medal for a system whose citations or verified dependents reach 2×, 10× or 100× its niche median: bronze, silver or gold. The badge shows the multiple and the measure; it is a threshold, not a place.
- Rising
- At least two of the three measures (commits per week, citations, verified dependents) are rising together in the system’s niche on this snapshot. It describes the recorded series; it is not a forecast.
How a figure is computed
- Momentum
- The slope of a system’s public signals over time: how fast it is moving. Evidaxis scores that slope and nothing else. A repository with two million stars and a flat curve scores zero.
- Momentum Score
- A 0–100 readout that maps a system’s within-cohort axis z-scores onto a single number within a cohort, collapsed to one number. A convenience view only. Recognition is decided by the convergence gate, never by this number.
- Development velocity
- Axis 1: the least-squares slope of log(1 + weekly commits) over the trailing 26 weeks. A fast, leading signal of where active work is accelerating.
- Citation momentum
- Axis 2: the slope of log(1 + citations per year) to a system’s canonical paper (OpenAlex). A slow, confirming signal of scholarly acceleration. Three rules keep it honest: drop the partial current year, drop the birth year once four full years exist, and require at least three completed years.
- Direct-dependents momentum
- Axis 3 in m3: the log-slope of unique direct dependents over each frozen-panel package union, using confirmed-clean deps.dev weekly partitions. Residualize slope on log(1 + latest), then robust z within cohort. At least 14 clean points and 5 latest dependents are required; cohort agreement and fragility can withhold a vote.
- Within-cohort robust-z
- Normalization: a raw axis slope is converted to a z-score using the median and median absolute deviation of its cohort (resistant to a single outlier), so "rising" means rising relative to peers, not in absolute terms.
- Residualization
- Axes 1 and 2 adjust their robust z against size proxies (log stars and log total citations). Axis 3 in m3 residualizes raw slope against log(1 + latest dependents) before robust z. This removes the fitted size relationship within each cohort.
- Convergence Gate
- The recognition rule in m2 and m3: a non-incumbent system is Rising only when its cohort has at least five members and at least two independent axes are present and rising (positive slope and within-cohort z at least one, plus axis-specific floors and vetoes). M2 has two axes; m3 accepts any two of three.
- Rising
- Status: two or more independent axes converge upward within the cohort. The full badge, and the rare one. It fires only when two separate signals agree, so a single pushed number cannot earn it.
- Watch
- Status: exactly one axis is rising; a second independent axis has not yet converged. A candidate signal, not a badge.
- Tracked
- Status: measured on two or more axes, none currently rising relative to the cohort.
- Single-axis
- Status used when fewer than two axes are available and no other status rule applies. The convergence gate needs at least two measured axes under the record's methodology version.
- Calibration
- Status: a mature incumbent included to anchor a cohort’s statistics. Measured but never badge-eligible: the badges go to systems on the rise.
- Cohort
- A peer set (a sub-niche within an industry) against which a system’s momentum is normalized. Membership controls the z-scoring, so a human draws the cohort line by hand.
- Snapshot
- A frozen, dated, hash-verified record of every measurement at a point in time, released under CC0. You cannot back-fill a baseline after the flare. The snapshot series is the part that compounds: a longitudinal map that no one can reconstruct from scratch later.
- Score receipt
- Three fields ride with every published number: methodology version, snapshot id, and manifest hash. With them, any score is independently checkable against its hash-pinned inputs in the public CC0 data.