After months of the star count slowly creeping higher and higher, as of July 8, 20251, the md-badges repository has reached 1000 stars!
The star history for the md-badges repository over time. (Source: https://star-history.com)
I initially began it on a whim, scrolling through GitHub and stumbling upon various other lists of a similar nature. I later thought "hey, I could do something like this", and so the "md-buttons" repository was created on December 6, 2023, with a grand total of 20 badges, which were mainly for use as information within README's, like downloads per month, when the last commit was, or the amount of contributors.
As you may be able to infer, this was extremely basic, thus more needed to be added.
30 minutes later, the first proper category was added, that being the "Programming Languages" category. And from this point, many, many more badges and categories would follow suit, and I'd say particularly within that first month, backed up the 149 commits made to the repository in just 24 days:
A screenshot of the amount of commits made in various repositories in December 2023.
By the end of December 2023, the repository had mostly formed into what it is now, with a total of 35 categories, and a few hundred badges.
Going into 2024, I created mdbadges-cli as a CLI tool akin to md-badges, consisting of the same badges, but with other features to expand it, like creating custom badges, searching for badges directly in the CLI, and more. Throughout most of the year, I maintained both simultaneously, keeping badges updated between the two.
Fast forward to May 14, 2024, and this is where the main list finally got cleaned up to look more like what it does today, as it was...not the most presentable thing ever before the cleanup. Most of it consisted of removing that unnecessary clutter around the actual list itself, which wasn't really changed:
Before (c9e9b64) | After (6b33026) |
|---|---|
 |  |
The "unnecessary clutter" that was removed, as evident by the comparison, was stuff like the logo, unneeded alerts, and other things that were just not fit for a project like this.
Since then, nothing much has really changed significantly enough to be mentioned here. New badges are being added semi-frequently via pull requests and my own additions, and the list continues to be maintained, along with other miscellaneous things.
Overall though, I'm pretty happy the repository managed to accumulate this many stars. It might seem dumb, since in reality, it's just a number, but it proves to me that it's helped enough people, including myself, to garner quadruple-digit stars. Because of that, I aim to keep maintaining the list, so that it could potentially help yet another person.