Stars measure attention, not quality. Attention correlates with quality, sometimes. Treat stars as a starting signal and you will be fine; treat them as a verdict and you will pick a dead project with a great launch post. - Stars tell you: the project captured interest, decent docs or demo, community big enough to answer your questions. - Stars do not tell you: it is maintained, the license works for you, the architecture fits, it is production-ready. - The grown-up method: take the most-starred list as discovery, then check commits, issue response times, release cadence, contributors beyond the founder. - An afternoon of diligence saves a quarter. Do not stop reading at the star count. Want the agent without the homework? PrivateLLM deploy sets up your private LLM on AWS for $50 plus usage.