STACAS
Single-cell batch correction that learned to use cell labels, then spent three releases chasing Seurat.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of atrrr and maths.genealogy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
The R client for Bluesky adds a firehose and stops assuming Bluesky is the server
atrrr wraps the AT Protocol for R, covering posting, search, profiles, lists, direct messages and starter packs. The latest release adds an experimental firehose implementation and allows connecting to personal data servers other than Bluesky's — Eurosky is the example given. Earlier releases built out the posting surface: videos, multiple images, link preview cards, hashtags, and ggplot2 objects posted directly.
A young Mathematics Genealogy client spending its first four releases satisfying CRAN.
maths.genealogy queries the Mathematics Genealogy Project over a WebSocket connection and renders academic advisor-student trees, with plot_grviz() as the visualisation entry point. The package reached CRAN in early 2025 and its functional surface has barely moved since — max_zoom() for deep trees at 0.1.1 is the only user-facing addition in the visible history.
atrrr wraps the AT Protocol for R, covering posting, search, profiles, lists, direct messages and starter packs. The latest release adds an experimental firehose implementation and allows connecting to personal data servers other than Bluesky's — Eurosky is the example given. Earlier releases built out the posting surface: videos, multiple images, link preview cards, hashtags, and ggplot2 objects posted directly.
Two years of work made atrrr a capable REST client for one network. This release starts undoing that second part. The firehose is a different access mode — a stream rather than a request — which is what researchers doing collection at scale need, and PDS-agnosticism means the package addresses the protocol rather than the company. The rest of the changelog is steadily maintenance-shaped: repeated httr2 compatibility work, endpoint changes tracked as they happen.
The firehose is labelled experimental, so the next release most likely stabilises it rather than opening another front — though the notes give no detail on what remains unfinished.
maths.genealogy queries the Mathematics Genealogy Project over a WebSocket connection and renders academic advisor-student trees, with plot_grviz() as the visualisation entry point. The package reached CRAN in early 2025 and its functional surface has barely moved since — max_zoom() for deep trees at 0.1.1 is the only user-facing addition in the visible history.
Every release after the first is CRAN policy management. Three consecutive entries deal with the same underlying problem: examples that hit a live network resource and therefore fail unpredictably on check machines. The progression from wrapping them in \donttest{} to catching a stray case to rewriting all examples against published API-package guidance shows the maintainer converging on a pattern rather than adding features. That is the normal cost of shipping a network client to CRAN, and it appears to be settling.
With the examples problem resolved, the next release is the first plausible opportunity for feature work — likely on the plotting side, given max_zoom() was the sole non-compliance change so far. The entries do not name anything specific in progress.
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either atrrr or maths.genealogy.
Single-cell batch correction that learned to use cell labels, then spent three releases chasing Seurat.
A debugger for ggplot2's internals, hardening its grip as the internals it traces keep moving.
A univariate density estimator that added zero-inflated data and reopened its C++ API to do it.
Stationary vine copulas for time series, released in lockstep with the rest of Nagler's vine stack.
A single-purpose ggplot2 extension that has spent six years tracking ggplot2 instead of growing.
A Star Trek data package that became a Memory Alpha web client and has been patching scrapers ever since.
See all atrrr alternatives → · See all maths.genealogy alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. atrrr and maths.genealogy are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. atrrr and maths.genealogy are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
Top atrrr alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "atrrr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/atrrr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top maths.genealogy alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "maths.genealogy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/maths-genealogy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.