Microsoft is 1.84 Peters, Google is 0.66. What's the Peter unit?

Hacker News Top Tools

Summary

A Next.js tool that ranks GitHub organizations by comparing their YTD activity to solo developer @steipete, using 'Peters' as a unit for fun benchmarking. Includes public leaderboards and private org support.

No content available
Original Article
View Cached Full Text

Cached at: 05/20/26, 02:23 AM

zozo123/peter-gt-your-org

Source: https://github.com/zozo123/peter-gt-your-org

How Many Peters?

Rank your GitHub R&D org against @steipete in one absurd, useful unit: the Peter.

A Next.js demo that takes verified 2026 YTD GitHub activity (commits, PRs, issues) and prices it in Peters — where 1 Peter = @steipete's YTD output as a solo developer. It’s part benchmark, part roast, part trust-building exercise about what GitHub-visible metrics can and can’t say about an engineering org.

Deploy with Vercel License: MIT Next.js 15 React 19 Tailwind 4

Hero


What you get

Type any org slug (supabase, microsoft, awslabs, vercel, …) and the page renders:

  • Total Peters — your YTD verified GitHub motion ÷ Peter’s.
  • Peter Density — Peters per active contributor. Keeps big orgs honest.
  • Momentum — projected year-end totals at current pace.
  • Cohort rank — you’re compared against orgs your size, not just the whole field.
  • A diagnosis paragraph — a roast/observation about whether you out-commit Peter, out-collaborate Peter, or quietly lose to Peter on density.

Org leaderboard

Public R&D ranking

Side-by-side comparison

Comparison strip

Share card + category breakdown + methodology

Share, category, trust

Mobile

Mobile view

Quickstart

git clone https://github.com/zozo123/peter-gt-your-org.git
cd peter-gt-your-org
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. No env vars required — the public preview ships with verified 2026 YTD snapshots for Supabase, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Vercel, Linear and a couple of demo orgs.


Connecting a real org (private coverage)

Public mode counts only what’s GitHub-visible. To include private repos for an org you have access to, hand the Next.js server a token:

GITHUB_TOKEN="$(gh auth token)" npm run dev

The token is read server-side only — it is never sent to the browser. It’s used to call GET /search/commits, GET /search/issues and GET /orgs/:org against the GitHub REST API.

Environment variables

VarRequiredWhat it does
GITHUB_TOKEN (or GH_TOKEN)for live modeServer-only token used to call GitHub Search + Orgs APIs.
GITHUB_ORGfor live modeOrg slug to live-fetch (e.g. vercel). Added to the leaderboard as a live row.
GITHUB_ORG_ACTIVE_CONTRIBUTORSoptionalDenominator for Peter Density. If unset, density isn’t shown for the live org.
GITHUB_ORG_REPOSITORIESoptionalOverride the repo count surfaced in the trust panel.
GITHUB_ORG_DISPLAY_NAMEoptionalFriendly name shown in the UI. Defaults to the GitHub org’s name.

Copy .env.example to .env.local to set these locally.


Methodology

  • Window: 2026 YTD — everything since 2026-01-01.
  • What counts: verified commits, pull requests, and issues created in the window. Reviews and other signals are folded in for orgs where the data is available.
  • Peter baseline: @steipete’s public GitHub activity over the same window, treated as 1.0 Peters.
  • Tiers:
    • < 0.1 — GitHub Intern Energy
    • 0.1 – 0.5 — Warming Up
    • 0.5 – 0.9 — Dangerous
    • 0.9 – 1.1 — Peter-Class
    • 1.1 – 2.0 — More Than One Peter
    • 2.0 – 5.0 — Peter Factory
    • ≥ 5.0 — Industrialized Peter
  • What this is not: a productivity score, a hiring signal, a promotion artifact, or a fair comparison across companies of wildly different sizes. The Peter Density metric exists specifically to flag the “we have 5,000 engineers, so of course we out-commit one guy” failure mode.

Deploy

Click the Deploy with Vercel button at the top of this README, or:

npx vercel

Next.js 15 auto-detects on Vercel — no vercel.json needed. To enable private-org coverage in production, set GITHUB_TOKEN in your Vercel project’s environment variables.


Tech

  • Next.js 15.5 (App Router, Turbopack)
  • React 19
  • Tailwind CSS v4
  • TypeScript 5
  • No database, no auth, no client-side secrets — the GitHub token (when present) is read on the server and never serialized to the client.

Project layout

app/             Next.js App Router entry + global styles
components/      All UI (Hero, Leaderboard, ComparisonStrip, ...)
lib/
  liveGithub.ts      Server-only GitHub API calls (token+org → live row)
  mockSnapshots.ts   Public-preview fixtures
  peterMath.ts       Peter Index / Density / tiering math
  types.ts           Snapshot / fixture types
docs/screens/    README screenshots

License

MIT — see LICENSE.


Built as a riff on @steipete’s legendary solo-developer commit graphs. Peter, if you’re reading this: you’re the unit. Sorry.

Similar Articles

GitHub faces a fight for its survival at Microsoft

The Verge

GitHub is struggling under Microsoft control, facing outages, security breaches, and talent drain, while falling behind in AI coding tools like Cursor and Claude Code, with internal leadership turmoil and competition threatening its survival.