Skill: Dependency Audit

What This Skill Does

Produces a dependency health report covering four dimensions: staleness (outdated versions), security (known vulnerabilities), licensing (compatibility issues), and usage (potentially unused packages).

When to Use

• Periodic maintenance check (monthly/quarterly)
• Before a major release
• When security is a concern
• When the user says "audit our dependencies" or "what needs updating?"

Execution Model

• Always: the primary agent runs this skill directly.
• Token budget: ~3-5k tokens.
• Output: chat-based audit report. Optionally written to docs/dependency-audit.md.

Workflow

Step 1: Identify Package Manager

# Node.js
[ -f "package-lock.json" ] && echo "npm"
[ -f "yarn.lock" ] && echo "yarn"
[ -f "pnpm-lock.yaml" ] && echo "pnpm"

# Python
[ -f "requirements.txt" ] && echo "pip"
[ -f "pyproject.toml" ] && echo "poetry/uv"

# Go
[ -f "go.sum" ] && echo "go modules"

Step 2: Check Staleness

# Node.js
npm outdated --json 2>/dev/null

# Python
pip list --outdated --format=json 2>/dev/null

# Go
go list -u -m all 2>/dev/null

Categorize updates:

Type	Risk	Action
Patch (1.0.0 → 1.0.1)	Low	Safe to update
Minor (1.0.0 → 1.1.0)	Medium	Review changelog
Major (1.0.0 → 2.0.0)	High	Breaking changes likely

Step 3: Check Vulnerabilities

# Node.js
npm audit --json 2>/dev/null

# Python
pip-audit --format=json 2>/dev/null

# Go
govulncheck ./... 2>/dev/null

Step 4: Check Licenses

# Node.js
npx -y license-checker --json 2>/dev/null | head -100

# Python
pip-licenses --format=json 2>/dev/null

Flag problematic licenses:

License	Compatibility
MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD	Permissive
GPL-3.0	Copyleft (check project license)
AGPL-3.0	Strong copyleft
Unknown	Investigate

Step 5: Generate Report

## Dependency Audit

### Summary
| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Total dependencies | N |
| Outdated | N |
| Vulnerabilities | N |
| License issues | N |

### Vulnerabilities (fix immediately)
| Package | Severity | Advisory | Fix |
|---------|----------|----------|-----|

### Major Updates Available
| Package | Current | Latest | Breaking Changes |
|---------|---------|--------|-----------------|

### Minor/Patch Updates
| Package | Current | Latest | Type |
|---------|---------|--------|------|

### License Concerns
| Package | License | Issue |
|---------|---------|-------|

### Recommendations
1. <prioritized action>

Rules

1. Use local tools: prefer npm audit, pip-audit, govulncheck over external services.
2. Prioritize security: vulnerabilities are more urgent than staleness.
3. Don't auto-update: this skill reports findings. Actual updates should be planned and tested.
4. License context matters: a GPL dependency in a MIT project might be fine (if not distributed) or a problem. Note the nuance.
5. No built-in explore agent: do NOT use the built-in explore subagent type.