Transparency: AI usage, data, and corrections

Last updated: 2026-09-05

What is generated by AI vs. written by hand

• Claude-drafted (path (b) on the About page): per-SaaS intro paragraphs, comparison notes, "who should use this / who should skip" decision cues, and migration tips on the comparison pages. They are drafted with Claude — in Claude Code sessions or scheduled routines run under the operator's account — against the upstream GitHub metadata; samples are spot-checked, entries are not individually reviewed unless signed. We stopped calling Anthropic's API from the pipeline in May 2026; text drafted through the API before then is not distinguishable from later drafts and carries the same label.
• Deterministic / templated (no AI): alternative cards (name, stars, license, language, last-pushed date), sort order, the "X of N shipped a commit in the last 12 months" line, and the curation gate that decides which pages get indexed.
• Hand-written and signed (path (a)): this page, the About, the Methodology, the Privacy Policy, the Terms, and the Contact page are written by the operator. The Editor's take on a comparison page and the guides are drafted in Claude Code sessions the operator runs, then read and confirmed by the operator before they are signed with a name and a last-revised date.

Full details — including what AI models reliably get wrong and how to spot it — are on the Methodology page (AI & human roles).

Data sources and update frequency

• Primary source: the public GitHub REST API (api.github.com) — repository metadata, stars, license, primary language, and the pushed_at timestamp.
• Refresh cadence: a daily ETL pipeline (cron-driven, on a self-hosted GitHub Actions runner the operator maintains) re-fetches the metadata and the site is rebuilt automatically. That run does not call a language model; where a SaaS has no editorial text yet it fills in a template, and pages whose text is only template are not published (see the About page).
• Lag: star counts, last-pushed dates, and license fields can be up to ~24 hours behind GitHub at any given moment. License classification follows the SPDX id returned by GitHub; where the API returns no SPDX id we read the repository's LICENSE file ourselves and show that value marked † (linked to the exact commit we read, with the date checked). A licence we could not resolve either way is rendered as "Unknown" rather than guessed.
• Not used: package-registry download counts, social-media mentions, or paid ranking signals.

How to report an error or request a correction

If something is wrong on a comparison page — incorrect license, an archived project we're still treating as active, a missing major alternative, a broken upstream link — please tell us:

1. Email [email protected]
2. Prefix the subject line with [correction]
3. Include the page URL, what is wrong, and (if possible) a link to a primary source for the correct value

We acknowledge within 5 business days and aim to ship factual corrections within 14 days. Project maintainers who want their project removed from the index can use the same address with the [removal] prefix; see the Contact page for the verification steps we require to confirm ownership.

Who runs this site

OSS Alternatives is written and operated by Yusuke Morinaga, an independent developer based in Japan (GitHub: @mori7ga2222, [email protected]). More context — including what the Editor's takes are and are not based on — is on the About page, and the registered business mailing address is on the Contact page.