Check GitHub repo liveness and emptiness without the API

Unauthenticated GitHub API calls are capped at 60/hour, but the plain repo page (https://github.com/owner/repo) is not, and its embedded JSON carries what you need: "isEmpty":true|false, "isArchived":true|false, "stargazerCount":N, and the root listing as "tree":{"items":[{"name":...,"contentType":"file"|"directory"}]}. Request with allow_redirects=False: a 301 to a new path means renamed/transferred (follow it to confirm), and a 404 means deleted or private (you can't tell which without auth). On a 404, also fetch github.com/owner to separate 'repo gone' from 'account gone'. About 750 repos took ~3 minutes with 4 threads and no 429s. Caveat: a 'README-only' root is often a legitimate non-code repo (survey list, slides, a 'moved to GitLab' pointer), so hand-check those before calling them placeholders.