GitHub - jshchnz/tribute: Discover and fund the open source projects your code depends on

Tribute

A Claude Code skill to discover and fund the open source projects your code depends on.

Why Tribute?

Your project depends on open source software maintained by volunteers and small teams. These maintainers often struggle to fund their work, yet their code powers your applications.

The problem: Finding funding links for your dependencies is tedious. Package registries don't surface this information well, and manually checking each project's GitHub is time-consuming.

Tribute solves this by automatically:

• Reading your dependency files
• Researching funding links from FUNDING.yml files and web searches
• Verifying every link actually works before showing it to you

Install

Copy the skill file to your Claude Code commands directory:

curl -o ~/.claude/commands/tribute.md \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jshchnz/tribute/main/tribute.md

Verify it worked:

ls ~/.claude/commands/tribute.md

Usage

In Claude Code, navigate to any project and type:

Claude will analyze your dependencies and return a funding report.

Example Session

You: /tribute

Claude: I'll analyze this project's dependencies and find verified funding links.

[Reads package.json, finds 15 dependencies]
[Checks FUNDING.yml for express... found Open Collective]
[Checks FUNDING.yml for lodash... found Open Collective]
[Searches for "chalk" funding... found GitHub Sponsors]
[Verifying links...]

## Dependency Funding Report for my-app

### Summary
- Analyzed: 15 direct dependencies
- Verified funding found: 6 packages

### Verified Funding Links

| Package | Funding | How Verified |
|---------|---------|--------------|
| express | [Open Collective](https://opencollective.com/express) | FUNDING.yml |
| lodash | [Open Collective](https://opencollective.com/lodash) | FUNDING.yml |
| chalk | [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/chalk) | FUNDING.yml |
| debug | [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/debug-js) | Web search |
| dotenv | [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/motdotla) | FUNDING.yml |
| commander | [GitHub Sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/shadowspawn) | FUNDING.yml |

### No Verified Funding Found

These packages don't have discoverable funding pages:
- react (maintained by Meta)
- typescript (maintained by Microsoft)
- @types/* (DefinitelyTyped community project)

### Quick Actions

Support these projects:
1. https://opencollective.com/express
2. https://opencollective.com/lodash
3. https://github.com/sponsors/chalk

How It Works

Tribute uses a multi-step verification process to ensure every funding link is accurate:

Step 1: Read Dependencies

Tribute reads your project's dependency files:

Node.js (package.json):

{
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.18.0",
    "lodash": "^4.17.21"
  }
}

Python (requirements.txt):

requests==2.31.0
flask>=2.0.0

Rust (Cargo.toml):

[dependencies]
serde = "1.0"
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

Step 2: Check FUNDING.yml

For each dependency, Tribute checks if the GitHub repo has a .github/FUNDING.yml file:

# Example FUNDING.yml from expressjs/express
open_collective: express
github: [dougwilson]

This is parsed to extract funding links:

• open_collective: express → https://opencollective.com/express
• github: dougwilson → https://github.com/sponsors/dougwilson

Step 3: Web Search Fallback

If no FUNDING.yml exists, Tribute searches for funding pages:

"{package name}" github sponsors OR open collective OR funding

Step 4: Verify Links

Every link is verified before being shown. This is crucial because:

• GitHub Sponsors pages only exist if the user enrolled
• Open Collective pages only exist if the project created one
• Training data about funding links may be outdated

Tribute fetches each URL and checks for valid responses. Broken links are excluded.

Supported Ecosystems

Why Verified Links?

Many tools guess funding URLs based on package names (e.g., assuming opencollective.com/{package} exists). This leads to broken links.

Tribute is different: Every link is fetched and verified before being presented. If a link doesn't work, it's not shown.

License

MIT