[insulanian]

Old last commit date could mean two things:

1. Project left in unfinished state and development stalled, in which case it's reasonable to run away from it.

2. Project done (fulfilling it's purpose) and turned to maintenance mode, in which case I'd be quite happy (as a matter of fact I'd prefer) to use it as I know I'm dealing with a stable codebase and don't need to be afraid of breaking changes in the future.

I think it would help if maintainers would state the "completeness" in the README file.

[mattbrewsbytes]

This used to be indicated by version numbers:

- 0.x = version in some beta/alpha/unstable state

- 1.x = version in somewhat stable/complete state

[falcolas]

A project could be effectively both - the developer still wants (wanted?) to add more features, but what's there is complete and stable.

Word of mouth and some good old experimentation seem to be your best options for identifying solid tooling.

[kuzimoto]

I think most of the time I just assume it's #1 and then check into the issues to see the number/severity of the current problems and if any important things are being neglected.

[tracker1]

I find that additionally (presuming github or similar) that looking through for any recent issues helps a lot... npm download rate is another metric for comparison. Thouse some obscure bits may not see so many downloads at all.