Dotfyle Neovim Plugins Scraper

Scrape Dotfyle — a directory of 2,500+ Neovim plugins aggregated from awesome-neovim and community submissions. Browse trending/popular/new plugins, search by keyword, filter by category/tag (LSP, completion, colorscheme, fuzzy-finder, statusline, and 75+ more), or look up a specific plugin by its GitHub owner/repo. HTTP-only via Dotfyle's public tRPC API — no auth, no proxy.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (browse/filter/sort) and byPlugin (direct owner/repo lookup)
• Sorting: trending (recent star growth), popular (most-used in indexed configs — see FAQ, not raw star count), new (recently added to Dotfyle)
• Category/tag filter: any combination of 80 known Dotfyle categories
• Keyword search: matched against plugin name/owner/description
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per plugin

• id — Dotfyle internal plugin ID
• name, owner — GitHub repo name and org/user
• category, categorySlug
• githubUrl — GitHub repository URL
• description, shortDescription
• stars, addedLastWeek — star count and recent star growth
• configCount — number of public dotfiles/configs on Dotfyle that use this plugin
• source — where Dotfyle sourced the listing (awesome-neovim, manually-created, etc.)
• createdAt — when the plugin was added to Dotfyle
• lastSyncedAt — when Dotfyle last synced metadata for this plugin from GitHub
• shieldAddedAt — when the plugin's README added a Dotfyle usage-count badge/shield, when known
• thumbnailUrl, mediaUrls[] — screenshots/demos, when the plugin has any (capped at 5)
• detailUrl — Dotfyle plugin page
• recordType: "plugin", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byPlugin
searchQuery	string	–	Keyword matched against name/owner/description (mode=search)
categories	array (select)	[]	One or more of 80 categories/tags (mode=search)
sortBy	string	trending	trending / popular / new (mode=search)
owner	string	–	GitHub owner (mode=byPlugin), e.g. nvim-telescope
repoName	string	–	GitHub repo name (mode=byPlugin), e.g. telescope.nvim
maxItems	int	25	Hard cap on emitted records (1–1000, mode=search)

Example: trending fuzzy-finder plugins

{
  "mode": "search",
  "categories": ["fuzzy-finder"],
  "sortBy": "trending",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: keyword search

{
  "mode": "search",
  "searchQuery": "telescope",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example: look up a single plugin

{
  "mode": "byPlugin",
  "owner": "folke",
  "repoName": "lazy.nvim"
}

Use cases

• Plugin discovery — find the most popular/trending plugins in a category before adding to your config
• Neovim distro curation — build category-complete plugin lists for a distro or starter config
• Ecosystem research — track star growth and adoption (configCount) across the plugin ecosystem
• Config generators — feed plugin metadata into a dotfiles/config-generation tool
• Competitive analysis for plugin authors — see where a plugin ranks within its category

Limitations

Dotfyle also hosts a separate "Configurations" section (dotfyle.com/[username]) where users publish their full Neovim dotfiles/config repos, plus a weekly "This Week in Neovim" news digest. Both are a different entity type from plugins (configs are dotfiles repos, not plugin packages) and are out of scope for this actor, which is purpose-built for the plugin catalog. configCount on each plugin record already surfaces the cross-reference signal (how many indexed configs use that plugin) without requiring a separate config-scraping mode.

FAQ

Is Dotfyle free to use? Yes — Dotfyle is a free, open Neovim plugin directory; no login is required to browse or search.

What's the difference between stars and configCount? stars is the plugin's GitHub star count. configCount is how many public Neovim configs indexed by Dotfyle actually use the plugin — a real-world adoption signal independent of stars.

Why is search sometimes empty for a query? Dotfyle's search matches plugin name, owner, and description text server-side. A very narrow or misspelled query can legitimately return zero plugins — this isn't an actor error.

Can I combine multiple categories? Yes — pass multiple values in categories; Dotfyle returns plugins matching any of the selected categories.

Does sortBy=popular sort by GitHub stars? No — verified against live data, Dotfyle's "popular" ordering ranks by configCount (how many indexed dotfiles actually use the plugin), not raw star count. Use sortBy=trending if you want star-growth-driven ordering, or sort the output yourself by stars for a pure star-count ranking.

What does lastSyncedAt mean? The last time Dotfyle's backend re-synced the plugin's metadata (stars, description) from GitHub. It's a reasonable proxy for plugin activity, though not the same as the underlying repo's last commit date.

How fresh is the data? Dotfyle re-syncs popular plugins roughly weekly; lastSyncedAt on each record shows the actual sync time for that plugin.