security-first-deps

Security-focused rules for choosing software dependencies, with attention to vulnerabilities, licenses, maintenance, trust scores, and indirect dependencies.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use them when selecting dependencies, checking direct and transitive libraries, reviewing licenses, or deciding whether a package should be added or upgraded.
Why use it?
They reduce the chance of adding an unsafe, poorly maintained, legally incompatible, or risky library to a project.

Cursor rule

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/sonatype/sonatype-cursor-plugin/security-first-deps
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sonatype/sonatype-cursor-plugin
Per session 259 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 259 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00259 $0.00259
Opus 5 $0.00130 $0.00130
Sonnet 5 $0.00052 $0.00052
Haiku 4.5 $0.00026 $0.00026

Measured 2d ago against content hash 70881ee6db72, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

security-first-deps scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

rules/security-first-deps.mdc · 28 lines

What it actually says

Security-first dependencies

When working with dependencies, prioritize security:

  1. Prefer high Developer Trust Scores: Sonatype's Developer Trust Score considers security history, maintenance activity, and community health. Aim for scores above 80.

  2. Avoid known vulnerabilities: Never add dependencies with critical or high-severity CVEs. Use /check-dependency to verify before adding.

  3. License compatibility: For commercial projects, prefer permissive licenses (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD). Be cautious with:

    • GPL (copyleft, may require source disclosure)
    • AGPL (network copyleft)
    • Unknown or custom licenses
  4. Maintenance signals: Prefer packages that are:

    • Recently updated (within last 6 months)
    • Actively maintained (responsive to issues)
    • Well-documented
  5. Transitive dependencies matter: A secure direct dependency can still introduce risk through its dependencies. Full audits catch these.

  6. When in doubt: Run /check-dependency before adding any new dependency to your project.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 28 lines · 259 tokens per session scan A 70881ee6db72

Subscribe to this mod's changes

security-first-deps is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository sonatype/sonatype-cursor-plugin (0 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 259 tokens to every session, about $0.0013 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.