THE SOURCE / A LAB BY KEITH DE ALWIS

Open-source intelligence for people and AI agents.

Discover software. Understand project health and momentum. Find credible open-source alternatives, with evidence you can inspect.

Explore the intelligence Connect via MCP View the open library

9,364open-source projects discovered

235verified and scored in depth

309recommendations, each with its evidence

SCROLL TO FOCUSDATA AS OF 10 Oct 2026 · DATASET 02138adc

01 / SURGE RADARUPDATED 10 Oct 2026

What is moving right now.

Star velocity across the 625 projects The Source measures every day, and the repositories developers are talking about. Every figure is measured, dated and explained.

7-DAY WINDOW00PROJECTS ON RADAR

02 / THE QUESTIONSWHAT IT IS BUILT TO ANSWER

Ask it what you would ask a good analyst.

ROUTED TOsource_get_alternatives

01
“What are credible open-source alternatives to Notion, and what are the trade-offs?”
source_get_alternatives
02
“Is this project actively maintained? Show the signals and their dates.”
source_get_project
03
“Which self-hostable alternatives to Slack are actively maintained?”
source_recommend
04
“Compare two projects for a 50-person team. What should we verify before adopting?”
source_compare_projects

03 / TWO WAYS INONE INTELLIGENCE LAYER

One intelligence layer. Two ways in.

FOR HUMANS

Explore the ecosystem.

For founders, developers, CTOs and researchers. Discover projects by category or by the commercial product they replace, compare the options, and judge fit on more than star counts.

Discover by category, use case or commercial alternative
Read health signals, release activity and momentum, with dates
Compare candidates with trade-offs and source links

Explore alternatives

FOR AGENTS

Give your agent a source.

A Markdown onboarding file your agent can read for itself. It learns what The Source is, picks the connection route for its client, asks you for any approval it needs, confirms the tools, then runs a sample query.

Machine-readable onboarding at agents.md
Public, read-only MCP server. No account
Every answer carries its date, provenance and licence

Point your agent at The Source

04 / THE INTERFACELIVE FROM THE PUBLIC READ LAYER

Evidence, not opinion.

Pick a product. These are the real, ranked recommendations from the published library, fetched live as you choose. What was observed is kept apart from what was inferred.

api/v1/saas/notion.json

REPLACING

Notion

Knowledge management

ObservedInterpretation

Loading the published snapshot…

Replacement Fit and Project Health are machine-derived scores under methodology v1.2.0, not editorial verdicts. Stars, licences, releases and activity dates are observed from each project’s own host. Verify before you adopt.

05 / OPEN BY DESIGNINSPECTABLE AND REUSABLE

The intelligence is yours to inspect.

9,364projects in the discovery tier. Searchable, labelled, never presented as recommendations

235projects verified and scored for fit and health

117commercial products mapped to open-source replacements

9upstream sources, each licence-reviewed and pinned to a commit

CODEMIT

DATACC BY 4.0

ACCESSGitHub + MCP

The repository licence does not automatically cover every upstream dataset. Source-level terms are documented separately, parts adapted from a share-alike source carry CC BY-SA 3.0, and 25 relationships are withheld from export because of them. Read the data licence ↗

06 / HOW IT WORKSA DAILY INTELLIGENCE CYCLE

Five steps. Every day.

01
Harvest
Nine licence-reviewed upstream lists, each pinned to a reviewed commit, plus a manual intake ledger. A list only advances if its licence file is unchanged.
02
Verify
Every candidate is checked against its own repository host. Maintained in the last twelve months, under a recognised open-source licence, or it does not pass.
03
Score
Replacement Fit and Project Health, each with a confidence figure and a versioned methodology. Machine-derived, and labelled as such.
04
Publish
A daily cycle refreshes the evidence and writes a dated, hashed snapshot. The read layer is static JSON you can cache, diff or audit.
05
Serve
The same layer, through a public read-only MCP server and the GitHub library. One source of truth. Nothing downstream keeps its own copy.

07 / AGENT ONBOARDINGREAD → CONNECT → VERIFY → ASK

Point your agent at The Source.

Read

The agent reads agents.md: what The Source is, what it can answer, and what it cannot.

Connect

It picks the route for its client. Some clients ask you to approve a connector or edit a local config. That is a feature.

Verify

It lists the tools and checks the dataset version and freshness before trusting an answer.

Ask

It runs a sample comparison, and cites the dates and sources behind the result.

THE FASTEST ROUTE · ANY AGENT THAT CAN READ THE WEB

Read https://de-alwis.com/lab/the-source/agents.md, follow the setup for this client, confirm the available tools, then compare two open-source alternatives to Slack with evidence.

CONNECT CLAUDE CODE

Run the command once. It adds The Source to your Claude Code configuration.
Start Claude Code and type /mcp to confirm the-source is connected.
Ask your question. Claude Code calls the tools it needs.

Run in your terminal

claude mcp add --transport http the-source https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

CONNECT CLAUDE

In Claude on the web or desktop, open Settings, then Connectors.
Choose Add custom connector. Name it The Source and paste the URL. No authentication is needed.
In a chat, switch The Source on from the tools menu, then ask.

On Team and Enterprise plans an owner may need to add the connector first.

Paste as the connector URL

https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

CONNECT CHATGPT

Open Settings, then Apps & Connectors, then Advanced settings, and turn on Developer mode.
Choose Create. Name it The Source, paste the URL and set authentication to No authentication.
Start a chat in Developer mode, enable The Source, then ask.

Developer mode is a beta and depends on your plan. Workspace admins may need to allow custom connectors.

Paste as the MCP server URL

https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

CONNECT CODEX

Run the command once, or in the Codex app open Settings, MCP servers, Add server, and choose Streamable HTTP with the same URL.
Run codex mcp list to confirm it is registered.
Ask Codex to use the-source by name.

Run in your terminal

codex mcp add the-source --url https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

CONNECT CURSOR

Add the entry to ~/.cursor/mcp.json, or to .cursor/mcp.json in a project.
Open Cursor Settings, then MCP, and check the-source shows as connected.
Ask in Agent mode.

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "the-source": { "url": "https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

CONNECT HERMES

Paste the prompt into a Hermes chat. Hermes edits its own config and reloads.
Approve the config change if Hermes asks.
Or add it by hand, run /reload-mcp, and check with hermes mcp test the-source.

Paste into Hermes

Add a new MCP server called "the-source" with transport type HTTP. Use the URL https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp. It needs no authentication headers. Reload MCP, list the tools it exposes, then call source_dataset_info and tell me the dataset version and when the data was last checked.

Or add to ~/.hermes/config.yaml

mcp_servers:
  the-source:
    url: https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

CONNECT ANY MCP CLIENT

Any client that speaks Streamable HTTP can connect with the URL alone.
No account and no key. Requests are rate-limited, 60 a minute per address.
Building your own agent? The MCP Python and TypeScript SDKs connect the same way.

Generic configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "the-source": { "type": "http", "url": "https://source-mcp.de-alwis.com/mcp" }
  }
}

Then ask

Compare two credible open-source alternatives to Slack. Cite the dates and sources behind each figure.

Read agents.md MCP setup and tools Methodology

THE PROMISE

Less searching. Less guesswork. Better software decisions.

Explore the intelligence Connect via MCP View the open library

Open-source intelligence for people and AI agents.

What is moving right now.

Ask it what you would ask a good analyst.

One intelligence layer. Two ways in.

Explore the ecosystem.

Give your agent a source.

Evidence, not opinion.

Notion

The intelligence is yours to inspect.

Five steps. Every day.

Harvest

Verify

Score

Publish

Serve

Point your agent at The Source.

Read

Connect

Verify

Ask

Less searching. Less guesswork. Better software decisions.