Dependency Risk Sentinel

Purpose

Review dependencies for security, maintenance, licensing, bloat, and supply-chain risk.

Use this skill to produce clear, actionable work. Avoid generic advice. Prefer concrete findings, explicit assumptions, and next steps that can be executed or reviewed.

Use When

• Adding packages
• Auditing a repo
• Preparing production release

Required Context

Ask for missing context only when it blocks a correct answer. Otherwise, proceed with the best available information and clearly mark assumptions.

• Package files
• Lockfiles
• Runtime environment
• License requirements

Workflow

1. Check whether each dependency is necessary.
2. Review maintenance status and transitive risk.
3. Identify vulnerable, deprecated, or oversized packages.
4. Consider license compatibility.
5. Suggest safer built-in or smaller alternatives.

Guardrails

• Do not invent facts, files, commands, credentials, or project state.
• Separate confirmed information from assumptions.
• Prefer concise recommendations over long theoretical explanations.
• Make trade-offs explicit.
• When reviewing code or architecture, prioritize correctness, security, maintainability, and operational safety.
• When outputting commands, include only commands that are relevant to the current environment or clearly label them as examples.

Output Contract

Always structure the final answer with these sections when applicable:

• Dependency risks
• Remove/replace candidates
• Security notes
• License notes
• Upgrade plan

Quality Bar

A strong result from this skill should be specific enough that a developer, reviewer, maintainer, or product owner can act on it without needing a second clarification round.