mgiovani Dependency Review
Comprehensive dependency audit covering vulnerability scanning, license compliance, and staleness analysis. This skill performs analysis only: it never modifies code, lock files, or manifests, and never auto-installs upgrades or missing audit tools (it reports them as unavailable instead).
Cite exact package names/versions/CVE IDs from actual tool output, never estimate or invent them.
Audit Workflow
Phase 1: Detect Package Managers & Technology Stack
Discover all package managers present in the project:
Use Glob to check for the existence of these files:
- package.json / package-lock.json / yarn.lock / pnpm-lock.yaml → npm/yarn/pnpm (Node.js)
- pyproject.toml / requirements*.txt / Pipfile / setup.py → pip/uv/poetry (Python)
- Cargo.toml / Cargo.lock → cargo (Rust)
- go.mod / go.sum → go modules (Go)
- composer.json / composer.lock → composer (PHP)
- Gemfile / Gemfile.lock → bundler (Ruby)
- *.csproj / packages.config / Directory.Packages.props → NuGet (.NET)
- pom.xml / build.gradle / build.gradle.kts → Maven/Gradle (Java/Kotlin)
Read each detected manifest to understand:
- Total number of direct dependencies
- Total number of dev dependencies
- Whether lock files are present and committed
- Workspace/monorepo structure (multiple package.json, Cargo.toml workspaces, etc.)
Phase 2: Run Native Audit Commands
Execute the audit command for each detected package manager, run independent commands in parallel, and save all raw output (including "tool not installed" errors) for Phase 3. Commands per ecosystem are in references/audit-commands.md, load it now.
Phase 3: Analyze Vulnerabilities, Licenses, and Staleness
Analyze the Phase 2 output across three dimensions (vulnerability triage, license compliance, staleness/upgrade complexity) scoped per the Scoping section below. Detailed per-dimension steps and risk-classification tables are in references/agent-prompts.md, load it before starting this phase.
Default to doing all three passes yourself, sequentially, in the current context: this is classification over data already fetched in Phase 2, not independent research, so a 3-way agent fan-out mostly re-reads the same output three times. Only spawn parallel Explore agents (one per dimension) when the audit output is unusually large: a multi-ecosystem monorepo, or output that would blow the context budget for a single pass. If no subagent/task tool is available, always do the three passes inline sequentially: that is the correct behavior for most runs anyway, not a degraded fallback.
Whichever mode you use:
- Read lock files for transitive dependency details when needed
- Provide structured findings with evidence from actual tool output
- Classify risk level (Critical/High/Medium/Low)
- Recommend specific actions with exact target versions
Phase 4: Risk Assessment & Prioritization
- Collect all findings across the three dimensions
- Deduplicate: remove findings reported under more than one dimension
- Cross-reference: Combine vulnerability + license + staleness data per package
- Prioritize by composite risk:
- Critical: Known exploited CVEs (CISA KEV), RCE vulnerabilities, packages with no maintained fork
- High: High-severity CVEs with public exploits, copyleft license in proprietary project, packages 3+ major versions behind
- Medium: Medium-severity CVEs without public exploit, permissive-but-unusual licenses, packages 1-2 major versions behind
- Low: Low-severity CVEs, informational license notes, minor version drift
- Group by action type: Security patches (non-breaking) vs. major upgrades (breaking) vs. replacements (abandoned packages)
- Statistics: Count total dependencies, vulnerable, license-risky, stale
Phase 5: Generate Dependency Report
Generate a comprehensive markdown report following the template in references/report-template.md.
Phase 6: Verification & Quality Check
Before presenting the report, verify:
- Every vulnerability finding has a CVE/GHSA ID or audit tool reference
- Every finding references the exact installed version and fix version
- License findings reference the actual license field from the package manifest
- Staleness findings include current version, latest version, and release date
- Statistics are accurate (counted from actual tool output, not estimated)
- No duplicate findings across categories
- Risk ratings are justified with evidence
- Upgrade recommendations include breaking change warnings where applicable
- No invented CVEs, license types, or version numbers
- Dependabot alerts are reconciled with local audit results
Scoping
By default, run all three dimensions (vulnerabilities, licenses, staleness) at medium severity and above. If the user asks to scope to just one dimension (e.g. "just check for vulnerabilities" or "license risk only"), run only that phase. If they ask to filter by severity (e.g. "critical only"), filter the report to that level and above.
Limitations
- Static analysis only: Cannot detect runtime-only vulnerabilities
- Tool dependent: Accuracy depends on the installed audit tools and their databases
- License heuristic: License detection relies on package metadata which may be incomplete
- No private registry support: May not detect vulnerabilities in packages from private registries
- Transitive depth: Some ecosystems have limited transitive vulnerability data
- Advisory lag: New CVEs may not be in audit databases for 24-48 hours after disclosure