vcfR
A genomics workhorse whose visible release feed stops dead in mid-2020.
Comparison · Infra & APIs
powerly vs states
A side-by-side editorial comparison of powerly and states — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
powerly vs states: at a glance
What is powerly?
A dormant sample-size package woke up in 2025 with parallel backends and a three-release DOI farce.
powerly implements a simulation-based method for choosing sample sizes in psychological network models. It sat untouched from September 2022 until August 2025, then shipped five releases in two days. v1.10.0 is the substantive one: parabar parallel backends with progress tracking, validation restricted to specific sample sizes, and warnings when the user picks argument values the method cannot support.
What is states?
State-panel tooling holding steady since its 2020 data and ergonomics release.
states supplies the Gleditsch & Ward and Correlates of War state lists and the tooling to turn them into country-year or country-month panels, with plot_missing() for coverage checks. The substantive work landed in 2020; the releases since are compatibility fixes against ggplot2, dplyr, readr and testthat. The most recent entry is a single test repair.
powerly vs states: editorial side-by-side
powerly
0.0INFRA · APIS
A dormant sample-size package woke up in 2025 with parallel backends and a three-release DOI farce.
◆ Current state
powerly implements a simulation-based method for choosing sample sizes in psychological network models. It sat untouched from September 2022 until August 2025, then shipped five releases in two days. v1.10.0 is the substantive one: parabar parallel backends with progress tracking, validation restricted to specific sample sizes, and warnings when the user picks argument values the method cannot support.
◆ Where it's heading
The reawakening tracks the underlying manuscript reaching publication — v1.9.0 is largely citation, DOI, and website work around a published paper, with CI and documentation debt cleared at the same time. Feature work resumed only after that housekeeping, and it points at usability rather than method: better feedback, better progress reporting, the ability to validate one sample size instead of a whole grid. Three of the five 2025 releases exist only to fix a DOI in the package documentation, one of them undoing the previous one.
◆ Prediction
With the paper published and the parallel-backend request from issue #8 finally closed, further releases most likely continue the usability line — more guardrails on argument choice — rather than extending the statistical method itself.
states
0.0INFRA · APIS
State-panel tooling holding steady since its 2020 data and ergonomics release.
◆ Current state
states supplies the Gleditsch & Ward and Correlates of War state lists and the tooling to turn them into country-year or country-month panels, with plot_missing() for coverage checks. The substantive work landed in 2020; the releases since are compatibility fixes against ggplot2, dplyr, readr and testthat. The most recent entry is a single test repair.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has reached the point where its own data and API are settled and the release trigger is upstream churn in the tidyverse. What movement there is goes toward making the two state lists interchangeable, with the microstates coding carried from G&W onto the COW data as the clearest example, rather than toward new datasets.
◆ Prediction
The next release is most likely another compatibility pass; a data refresh would be the signal that the package is active again.
Alternatives to powerly and states
Other Infra & APIs 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 powerly or states.
dialr
The R phone-number package stopped only parsing numbers and started asking them where they are.
ggVennDiagram
A Venn diagram package whose public release notes say almost nothing — including about its copyright cleanup.
ordinalsimr
A Shiny app for choosing the right ordinal test reached CRAN in a single 90-minute burst of tags.
transltr
A new R localization package that reached CRAN and immediately downgraded itself to experimental.
hereR
An R client for HERE's location APIs, shaped almost entirely by what the vendor exposes next.
See all powerly alternatives → · See all states alternatives →
Recent activity from powerly and states
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 11mo agopowerlyParallel backends with progress tracking, plus targeted validation
- 11mo agopowerlyDOI markup restored in package documentation
- 11mo agopowerlyDOI markup removed from package documentation
- 11mo agopowerlyIncorrect DOI corrected in package documentation
- 11mo agopowerlyThree-year gap closed with citation refresh and an osqp dependency drop
- 0y agostatesplot_missing() test fixed for the next ggplot2
- 2y agostatesggplot2 and dplyr deprecation cleanup
- 2y agostatesBundled state data stripped to plain data frames
- 3y agopowerlyInvalid HTML nesting removed from function documentation
- 5y agostatesMicrostate coding for COW data and state_panel() shortcuts
- 7y agostatesSimpler defaults for state_panel() and plot_missing()
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between powerly and states?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. powerly and states 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.
Is powerly better than states?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. powerly and states 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 Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to powerly?
Top powerly alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "powerly alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/powerly for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to states?
Top states alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "states alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/states for the full list with editorial commentary on each.