GitHub developer search
Paste a job description and find developers on GitHub who have a real, published email.
GitHub developer search finds software developers through their public work on GitHub. You paste a job description, Tahoe works out what to look for, and it returns a shortlist of developers who each have a real email address in their public GitHub data. Every result tells you where its email came from.
In the side panel, choose GitHub, then New Search. Past runs are under GitHub → Searches.
Connect your GitHub account
The first time, the page says “Connect your GitHub to start searching.” Searches run on your own GitHub account, so you get your own GitHub usage limit instead of sharing one.
Click Connect GitHub
GitHub opens and asks you to approve Tahoe. Approve it and you come back to Tahoe.
Check the account
The page now says Searching as with your GitHub username. Use Disconnect next to it to remove Tahoe’s access at any time.
Run a search
Paste the job description
Paste the description into the box, or click one of the examples under it. Leave Review filters before searching ticked to check the plan first (recommended).
Click Analyze role
Tahoe reads the description for a few seconds and turns it into a search plan. Nothing is charged yet. If you unticked the review box, the button says Find developers → and the search starts straight away.
Edit the plan
The screen says “Here’s the search plan we derived.” Change anything you like (see the table below). Broader plans usually work better: Tahoe ranks the people afterwards, but a plan that is too narrow cannot find more.
Check the price and run
Next to the button you see the price and a time estimate, for example “2 credits · ~50s.” Click Find developers →.
The search plan
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Strategy | Where Tahoe looks. Repo owners: people who own matching repositories. Contributors: people who contribute to them (this finds most people, and is always on). User search: GitHub’s own user search by language and location. |
| Language | Programming languages, such as Go or Python. |
| Topics | Repository topics, such as kubernetes. Established topics work best; a rare one returns nothing. |
| Minimum stars | Filters repositories, not people. Keep it low, because a high number shrinks the pool for little gain. |
| Location | Such as Berlin or remote. GitHub locations are free text, so this leaves out more people than you expect. |
| Active within | Any, 90 days, 6 months or 1 year since their last public activity. |
| Contactable target | How many developers with an email you want, from 1 to 300 (100 by default). This sets the price. |
| Screen up to | How many people Tahoe checks along the way, from 50 to 400. |
← Back returns to the job description.
What it costs
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Analyzing the role and editing the plan | Free |
| A search, up to 100 contactable developers | 2 |
| Each extra 100 contactable developers in your target | 2 more |
| Paging, sorting, filtering and saving results to a list | Free |
| CSV export | 20, once per search. Downloading the same search again is free. |
You are charged when the search finishes with results: the base 2 credits, plus 2 more only for each complete extra 100 developers it actually delivers. If you asked for 200 and it found 130, you pay 2 credits, and the search page shows “quoted 4, charged 2.” A workspace can run one GitHub search at a time and up to 10 a day.
While it runs
The search usually takes about a minute. It runs in the background, so you can leave the page and come back: it keeps going and appears under GitHub → Searches. Use Cancel on the progress screen to stop it.
Read the results
The top line says how many developers were found, such as “94 developers · every one has an email we can evidence.” Run details shows how many GitHub accounts Tahoe saw and screened to get there.
The table shows 25 developers per page, with Candidate, Email, Contact, Match, ★ Stars and Lang. Sort by email confidence, match or stars. Click a row to open the developer’s GitHub profile.
Each email shows a status (verified, probable or unconfirmed), a confidence percentage and a copy button. Hover over it to see where it came from:
- Published on their GitHub profile
- Verified on their GitHub GPG key
- From their commits in a matched repository
- From their commits in their own repository
- From their public commit history
Narrow the table with the Language box and the chips Any email, Verified, Verified + probable and Open to work.
Save developers to a list
Select developers (across pages if you like), then click Save 12 to list and pick one of your lists. If you have no lists yet, the dialog asks you to create one first. The developers join your other saved people, so you can enrich them and add them to campaigns. Saving costs no credits.
Export a CSV
Click Export CSV for a spreadsheet of the developers with their email addresses. The first export of a search costs 20 credits, and the dialog says so before you confirm. Later downloads of the same search are free. Running the search again creates a new search, so its export is charged again.
Manage past searches
GitHub → Searches lists every run with its name, the start of the job description, its status, how many developers it found and when it ran. Use the Recent and Saved tabs to switch views. On each row:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Save / Unsave | Pins the search to the Saved tab and marks it with a star. |
| CSV | Exports its results (20 credits the first time, then free). |
| Re-run | Runs the same plan again as a new search, which is charged again. |
| Delete | Removes the search and its developers, after you confirm. This cannot be undone. |
Click a search name to reopen its results for free.
Example
Sam Lee at Brightwater Logistics pastes a job description for a senior Go engineer who works with Kubernetes, remote in the US.
Tahoe’s plan uses the language Go and the topic kubernetes, with Contributors on. Sam removes the location, because many good developers leave it blank, and keeps the contactable target at 100. The price reads 2 credits. About a minute later Sam has a shortlist of developers, filters to Verified emails, selects the top 15 by match and saves them to a list for a campaign.
Related
Prefer to ask in an AI app? GitHub search also works from Tahoe MCP. Tahoe MCP