JavaScript syntax highlighter with language auto-detection and zero dependencies.
This report summarizes scanner evidence for highlightjs/highlight.js, a JavaScript project with 25,010 GitHub stars. SynthScan examined 157,822 lines of code across 1989 source files, recording 79 pattern matches distributed across 6 syntactic categories. The legacy adjusted pattern signal is 0.6 (Low pattern signal); it is not an authorship estimate.
Use the findings to ask whether maintainers can explain intent, verify dependencies, simplify unnecessary scaffolding, and focus review effort. Risk Payload v1 adds ownership, supply-chain, over-engineering, and review-effort vectors when available. These are prompts for human verification, not probabilities, security findings, or measured maintenance costs.
Use each vector to guide manual verification of the underlying findings.
Payload schema: 1.0.0 · Engine: 2.0.0 · Scoring: heuristic-density-v1 · Scan date: 2026-10-31.
Can maintainers explain intent, assumptions, and trade-offs? 59 finding(s).
Are imports declared and package/API names verified? 20 finding(s).
Are wrappers, guards, and repeated structures necessary? 5 finding(s).
Which changes need focused human review? 79 finding(s).
This chart tracks the legacy adjusted pattern score across scan runs. Changes can reflect source changes, scan coverage, or detector/scoring versions; they do not measure AI adoption or prove that a team refactored code. Compare runs only when their scoring versions are compatible. The dashed line tracks the raw pattern-hit count.
Groups findings by configured severity weight. Severity is not a confidence estimate, security rating, or proof that a package is missing. Verify imports against the project's manifests and inspect each finding in its local design context.
This horizontal bar chart shows where configured pattern scores accumulate across directories. Treat the bars as locations to inspect, not as evidence of authorship or code quality. Use the file-level findings to decide whether a directory needs a focused ownership, dependency, complexity, or review check.
The scanner identified 79 distinct pattern matches across 6 syntactic categories. Each entry below represents a discrete location in the source code where the engine recorded a detector match to inspect in context. Expand any category row to inspect the individual file paths, line numbers, code snippets, and the lexical context (CODE, COMMENT, or STRING) in which each match was detected.
Reading the findings table: The Severity column indicates the configured finding weight (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW). The Context column identifies whether the match occurred inside executable code, an inline comment, or a string literal — legacy comment-context matches receive a ×1.5 score weight. The ⚡ bolt icon marks clustered matches: three or more patterns within a 10-line window, each receiving an additional ×1.5 density multiplier under the legacy scoring model.
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | tsconfig.json | 1 | { | COMMENT |
| LOW | tools/build.js | 1 | #!/usr/bin/env node | COMMENT |
| LOW | tools/build.js | 21 | // | COMMENT |
| LOW | tools/build.js | 41 | // browserify. Luckily, you can easily do two things to make the build | COMMENT |
| LOW | tools/sample_files/python.txt | 121 | """Contains the navigational information for some part of the page | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/index.js | 21 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | test/detect/index.js | 41 | // languages.filter(hljs.autoDetection).forEach((language) => { | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/detect/index.js | 61 | // }); // this is also required for the dynamic test generation above to work | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/detect/leaf/default.txt | 1 | #(variable) | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/detect/step21/default.txt | 21 | #11=CARTESIAN_POINT('',(2.E0,2.E0,-2.E0)); | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/detect/r/default.txt | 41 | #> 3 versic… length-wi… 0.574 0.556 0.344 31.7 1.92e- 9 3 | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/regex/index.js | 161 | } | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/gml/macro-override.txt | 1 | #macro CHEATS false | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/gml/region.txt | 1 | #region | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/gml/struct-in-ternary.txt | 1 | // FIXME: ternary eats the `:` in the struct literal here. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/gml/colour-literals.txt | 1 | #000000 | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/gml/jsdoc.txt | 1 | /// @func func(a) | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/gml/jsdoc.txt | 61 | // @ignore | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/leaf/default.txt | 1 | #(variable) | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/step21/default.txt | 21 | #11=CARTESIAN_POINT('',(2.E0,2.E0,-2.E0)); | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/dart/comment-markdown.txt | 1 | /// Comment. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/latex/parameters.txt | 1 | #7 | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/rust/attributes.txt | 1 | #[foo] | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/rust/attributes.txt | 21 | #[doc = r#"see ] inside raw"#] | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/fsharp/fsi-and-preprocessor.txt | 1 | #if foo | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/fsharp/fsi-and-preprocessor.txt | 21 | #r "nuget:FSharp.Data, 3.1.2";; // Load Nuget Package 'FSharp.Data' version '3.1.2' | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/r/roxygen.txt | 1 | #' A description | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/vbnet/directives.txt | 1 | #Region "MathFunctions" | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/php/attributes.txt | 1 | namespace Entity; | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/scala/using-directives.txt | 1 | //> using scala 3.3.0 | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/cpp/preprocessor.txt | 1 | #include <iostream> | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/markup/swift/keywords.txt | 21 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | test/markup/swift/regex.txt | 21 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | test/markup/objectivec/preprocessor.txt | 1 | #include <iostream> | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 1 | # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 61 | #language = None | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 81 | #add_module_names = True | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 121 | "source_docs_path": "/docs/", | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 141 | # relative to this directory. They are copied after the builtin static files, | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 161 | # If false, no module index is generated. | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 181 | # base URL from which the finished HTML is served. | COMMENT |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 201 | #'preamble': '', | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/languages/cos.js | 41 | // registered function - no need in them due to all functions are highlighted, | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/languages/cos.js | 61 | // "$zconvert", "$zcrc", "$zcyc", "$zdascii", "$zdchar", "$zf", | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/languages/crystal.js | 161 | // statement, since there would be no closing delimiter to match. | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/languages/ada.js | 41 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | src/languages/julia.js | 61 | 'while', | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/languages/julia.js | 121 | // # built_in generator (Julia 1.5.2) | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/languages/python.js | 261 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | src/styles/nord.css | 21 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | src/styles/agate.css | 1 | /*! | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/lib/modes.js | 101 | // note: this is not an exhaustive list of contractions, just popular ones | COMMENT |
| LOW | src/lib/mode_compiler.js | 181 | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRITICAL | test/detect/subunit/default.txt | 13 | test: bzrlib.tests.blackbox.test_add.TestAdd.test_add_control_dir(pre-views) | CODE |
| CRITICAL | test/detect/subunit/default.txt | 15 | successful: bzrlib.tests.blackbox.test_add.TestAdd.test_add_control_dir(pre-views) [ multipart | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | test/detect/golo/default.txt | 14 | let john = human("John Doe") | CODE |
| LOW | test/detect/dockerfile/default.txt | 22 | ENV myName="John Doe" myDog=Rex\ The\ Dog \ | CODE |
| LOW | test/markup/golo/default.txt | 14 | let john = human("John Doe") | CODE |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.txt | 5 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | STRING |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.txt | 5 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | STRING |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.txt | 13 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | CODE |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.txt | 13 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | CODE |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.expect.txt | 5 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | CODE |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.expect.txt | 5 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | CODE |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.expect.txt | 13 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | CODE |
| LOW⚡ | test/markup/gherkin/docstrings.expect.txt | 13 | Here is the first paragraph of my blog post. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, | CODE |
| LOW | test/markup/dns/caa.txt | 4 | @ IN CAA 0 contactemail "admin@example.com" | CODE |
| LOW | src/languages/nix.js | 46 | "placeholder", | CODE |
| LOW | src/languages/nix.js | 142 | "placeholder", | CODE |
| LOW | src/languages/lib/css-shared.js | 294 | 'placeholder', | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | tools/buildSizeReport.js | 103 | function reportRemovedFilesSection(base, _pr, removedFiles) { | CODE |
| LOW | tools/buildSizeReport.js | 120 | function reportChangedFilesSection(base, pr, changedFiles) { | CODE |
| LOW | tools/sample_files/python.txt | 101 | def _substitute_if_appropriate(cls, ns, f): | CODE |
| LOW | tools/sample_files/python.txt | 1451 | def default_candidate_generator(tag): | CODE |
| LOW | test/regex/index.js | 113 | function checkDisjointAlternatives(node) { | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | docs/conf.py | 6 | # This file is execfile()d with the current directory set to its containing dir. | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 14 | CODE | |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 14 | CODE | |
| LOW | docs/conf.py | 15 | CODE |