GitHub Star History visualizes the cumulative star growth of any public repository as a line chart, fetching the complete star history through the GitHub API, aggregating by month, and exporting the result as an 800×470 PNG. If you want to show a project's growth trajectory in a report or social post, this is a direct way to do it.
Why You Need a Personal Access Token
GitHub limits unauthenticated API requests to 60 per hour — enough for small repos, but a repository with a few hundred stars will exhaust that budget quickly. Adding a Personal Access Token (PAT) raises the limit to 5000 requests per hour.
To get a token: GitHub account → Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Tokens (classic) → Generate new token. You don't need to check any permission scopes — public repository data requires none. The token is only used in your browser and never sent to this site's servers.
URL Format Requirements
The input field accepts https://github.com/owner/repo format only. A trailing slash or any sub-path will trigger an error:
https://github.com/Ice-Hazymoon/MikuTools— validhttps://github.com/Ice-Hazymoon/MikuTools/— invalid (trailing slash)https://github.com/Ice-Hazymoon/MikuTools/issues— invalid (sub-path)
How the Chart Data Works
Data aggregation
- Stars are grouped by month; each point shows the cumulative total at month end
- Horizontal axis uses year labels; vertical axis auto-scales to K/M units
- Hover on the line to see the specific month and count
Export specs
- Fixed width 800px, aspect ratio approximately 1.7:1
- White background — embeds cleanly into light or dark documents
- Filename automatically includes the owner and repo name
Query Time Reference
The more stars a repository has, the more paginated API requests are needed. A repo with a few thousand stars and a valid token typically loads in 10–30 seconds, with a live progress percentage shown on screen. Very large repos with tens of thousands of stars can take over a minute.