Archived

On GitHub, an archived repository is read-only: no commits, no issues, no PRs. The setting is a one-click toggle in the repository settings, and it preserves all history. Archiving is the explicit signal that the project is end-of-life and not coming back.

Archive is different from "abandoned" — abandoned means no one is maintaining it but the project could be revived. Archived means the maintainer has explicitly said: this is done. The distinction matters for the adopter: an archived project is harder to adopt because the original maintainer has signaled they're not participating in the handoff. A project that has the adopt-me topic but is not archived is the easier target — the maintainer wants to hand it off but hasn't yet frozen the repo.

If you're maintaining a project you've truly walked away from, archive is often the right move after the handoff. It stops the issue tracker from filling up, it makes the project state explicit, and it lets the new maintainer (or the fork) start fresh without the noise of your old TODOs.