The latest articles on DEV Community by Gracebuilder (@gracebuilder). https://dev.to/gracebuilder https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4141565%2Ff51a529a-84b4-47cf-90bb-8a4f53125674.png https://dev.to/gracebuilder en Gracebuilder Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:57:24 +0000 https://dev.to/gracebuilder/i-built-a-static-code-scanner-that-scores-your-repos-carbon-footprint-3hf4 https://dev.to/gracebuilder/i-built-a-static-code-scanner-that-scores-your-repos-carbon-footprint-3hf4 <p>Most code quality tools tell you if your code is correct. <br> None of them tell you if it's efficient in the energy sense.</p> <p>I wanted to change that. So I built sustainability-score — <br> a static-analysis tool that reads your repository and tells <br> you how its engineering choices affect carbon and cost <br> efficiency, grounded in the Green Software Foundation's <br> SCI specification.</p> <h2> The problem I was solving </h2> <p>The Green Software Foundation's Software Carbon Intensity <br> (SCI) specification gives us a framework for thinking about <br> software carbon. But measuring energy for a running system <br> is hard.</p> <p>What isn't hard is reading a repo and asking: are the <br> engineering choices here pushing carbon up or down? That <br> is a static analysis problem. That is what this tool does.</p> <h2> How it works </h2> <p>The tool scores across five weighted pillars:</p> <ul> <li>Code / Algorithm Efficiency — 30%</li> <li>Cloud Infrastructure Choices — 25%</li> <li>Containerization — 15%</li> <li>CI/CD Practices — 15%</li> <li>SRE / Operations — 15%</li> </ul> <p>Each pillar starts at 100 and loses points per finding <br> by severity. High: minus 20. Medium: minus 10. Low: minus 4.</p> <h2> The part I am most proud of — honesty </h2> <p>Every finding is stamped with a data quality tier:</p> <ul> <li>Tier 1 — static analysis only. Directional.</li> <li>Tier 2 — static plus declared infrastructure.</li> <li>Tier 3 — static plus operational telemetry.</li> <li>Tier 4 — direct measurement. Full SCI computable.</li> </ul> <p>A static scan never claims above Tier 1. The report says <br> plainly it is directional, not a measurement. Carbon washing <br> is a real problem and I did not want to add to it.</p> <h2> Try it </h2> <p>pip install -e .<br> sustainability-score /path/to/repo --md report.md</p> <p>A sample report is included in the repo so you can see <br> the output before running it.</p> <h2> What is next </h2> <ul> <li>Broader per-language efficiency checks</li> <li>JSON schema for the output format</li> <li>A GitHub Action that posts advisory PR comments</li> <li>A proposal to the GSF reference implementations collection</li> </ul> <p>MIT licensed. Open source. Contributions and feedback welcome.</p> <p>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/srinathgopinath-code/sustainability-score" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/srinathgopinath-code/sustainability-score</a></p> codequality showdev softwaredevelopment tools