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Dependency management

Skill agent-packs/registry/skills/dependency-management

Keep dependencies secure, minimal, and up to date. Use when auditing a project's supply chain, adding new libraries, evaluating upgrades, or hardening a CI pipeline against dependency risks.From its SKILL.md

Install
npx -y skills add agent-packs/registry --skill dependency-management

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

2 things to look at

  • no licenseNo license file was found in the repository. Code published without one is not open source by default, so using it at work is a question for whoever answers licensing questions where you are.
  • 0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its file declares

Copied from the file, not written here

The file declares its own license as Apache-2.0. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.

SKILL.md

3.8 KB, 780 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Dependency Management

Every dependency is code you didn't write, can't fully review, and must maintain forever. Choose carefully.

Evaluating New Dependencies

Before adding a dependency, ask:

  • Can I implement this in under 100 lines without the library? If yes, consider doing so.
  • Is the library actively maintained? (Last release date, open issue count, PR response time)
  • How many transitive dependencies does it add? (npm why, cargo tree, pip show)
  • Is the license compatible with this project?
  • Has it had security advisories in the past 12 months, and how were they handled?

Prefer dependencies that do one thing well over ones that solve everything.

Lock Files

  • Commit lock files (package-lock.json, Cargo.lock, poetry.lock, go.sum) for applications. Lock files guarantee reproducible builds.
  • For libraries, commit Cargo.lock (Rust) but do not commit package-lock.json (npm) — downstream consumers resolve their own trees.
  • Never edit lock files by hand. Regenerate them by upgrading the source manifest and re-running the package manager.
  • Treat lock file diffs in PRs as code — review them. Unexpected transitive version changes are a supply chain risk.

Keeping Dependencies Updated

  • Use Dependabot, Renovate, or a similar bot to open automatic upgrade PRs. Configure it with a schedule (weekly for minor/patch, manual for major) and a reviewer assignment.
  • Group patch updates into a single PR; review minor and major updates individually.
  • Read changelogs for every minor and major upgrade before merging. Don't auto-merge without a changelog review.
  • Prefer upgrading one dependency at a time so regressions are attributable.

Security Auditing

  • Run dependency audits in CI on every merge: npm audit, cargo audit, pip-audit, govulncheck.
  • Set audit to fail CI on high or critical severities. moderate should be tracked and addressed within a sprint.
  • Subscribe to security advisories for your major dependencies via GitHub Advisory Database or the relevant language ecosystem's advisory feed.
  • Audit licenses in CI with license-checker (npm) or cargo-deny (Rust). An undiscovered GPL transitive dependency can create legal obligations.

Pinning and Reproducibility

  • Pin exact versions in production application manifests: "react": "18.2.0" not "react": "^18". Floating ranges shift the build on every install.
  • For Docker base images, pin to a digest (node@sha256:...) not just a tag. Tags are mutable.
  • For Go, go mod tidy removes unused dependencies — run it before every release.
  • For Python, use pip-compile (pip-tools) or poetry lock to generate a pinned requirements file from a high-level spec.

Reducing the Footprint

  • Periodically audit for unused dependencies: npm-check, cargo machete, deptry (Python). Remove anything not actively used.
  • Prefer devDependencies over dependencies for build and test tools — they don't ship to production.
  • When a dependency is used in only one place, evaluate whether the function can be inlined and the dep removed.

Checklist

  • New dependencies evaluated for maintenance health, license, and transitive footprint.
  • Lock file committed and reviewed in PRs.
  • Dependency audit running in CI, failing on high/critical CVEs.
  • Automated upgrade bot configured with changelog review requirement.
  • License audit in CI for production application.
  • Unused dependencies pruned on a quarterly schedule.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most security skills give in 780 tokens

Counted across 648 of the 828 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-07

  • Parameterize all database queriesin 68 of 648, across 51 files
  • Hash passwords using bcrypt, scrypt, or argon2in 49 of 648, across 36 files
  • Apply rate limiting to authentication endpointsin 48 of 648, across 24 files
  • Configure security headersin 35 of 648, across 19 files
  • Validate all inputsin 32 of 648, across 24 files
  • Validate all external input at the system boundaryin 29 of 648, across 19 files
  • Run containers as a non-root userin 28 of 648, across 15 files
  • Use httponly secure samesite cookies for sessionsin 26 of 648, across 15 files
  • Run dependency audits before every releasein 21 of 648, across 10 files
  • Encode output to prevent cross-site scriptingin 21 of 648, across 11 files
  • Copy dependencies before source codein 20 of 648, across 9 files
  • Store secrets in environment variablesin 20 of 648, across 18 files

Said here and by no other author read

  • consider implementing trivial functionality without a library
  • upgrade one dependency at a time
  • fail CI on high or critical audit severities
  • pin exact versions in production manifests

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.

Keep looking

Skills are one crate of 326,834. Ordering is by how many stacks a row turns up in, so the top of any crate is what has actually been picked rather than what has the most stars.