Chroma vs Sardine

Chroma and Sardine both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Chroma (rank #209) holds a modest lead over Sardine (rank #569) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (49 vs 35). The gap of 14 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Chroma is slightly ahead of Sardine. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Chroma is ahead of Sardine. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Chroma is ahead of Sardine. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Sardine is slightly ahead of Chroma. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Chroma is slightly ahead of Sardine.

Chroma carries 30,602 GitHub stars across 29 public repos, with 6 repositories active in the last 90 days and 94 external contributors on record. Sardine shows 19 stars across 55 public repos, 5 active in the last 90 days and 5 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Chroma's footprint is roughly 1610.6x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Chroma is the stronger read for anyone weighting education. Sardine looks better where reach is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.