A guide to deps.dev, a service that provides package versions and dependency information for software ecosystems. It explains how to find a package's default version and check whether it is deprecated.

Use it to look up package versions, normalize package names, handle large responses, and inspect dependency or deprecation details.

It helps avoid guessing package names, versions, or API formats. It also prevents treating a package's default version as automatically safe when it may be deprecated.

deps-dev — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by itechmeat/llm-code

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.

Any agent

npx skills add itechmeat/llm-code --skill deps-dev

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/itechmeat/llm-code

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/itechmeat/llm-code/deps-dev/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/itechmeat/llm-code/deps-dev)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/itechmeat/llm-code/deps-dev"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/itechmeat/llm-code/deps-dev/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/itechmeat/llm-code/deps-dev"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/itechmeat/llm-code/deps-dev.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 74 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 528 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00074	$0.00528
Opus 5.5	$0.00030	$0.00211
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00015	$0.00106
Haiku 4.5	$0.00007	$0.00053

Measured 1mo ago against content hash aae003ac0d93, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

deps-dev 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 1mo 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.

skills/deps-dev/SKILL.md · 46 lines

What it actually says

deps.dev (Skill Router)

This file is intentionally introductory.

Open the right note under references/ based on what you need.

Start here (fast)

Need the latest/default version of a known package? Read: references/latest-version.md.
Handling huge version lists or truncated responses? Read: references/large-responses.md.
Not sure how to format/normalize package names per ecosystem? Read: references/naming-and-encoding.md.
Need endpoint shapes and fields to parse, including deprecation flags (isDeprecated/deprecatedReason), PyPI projectStatus, or resolved NuGet/Maven requirements? Read: references/api.md.

Primary recipe (one request)

Goal: given {system, packageName}, return the default/latest version.

Call GetPackage: GET https://api.deps.dev/v3/systems/{SYSTEM}/packages/{PACKAGE}
Parse versions[] and select the item with isDefault=true.

If isDefault is missing for all versions, stop and ask for an explicit selection rule (e.g., include pre-releases or not) instead of guessing.

isDefault does not imply the version is safe to recommend: also check isDeprecated/deprecatedReason on that version (see references/api.md) before suggesting it.

Critical prohibitions

Do not guess the “latest” version by string sorting.
Do not output placeholder or “approximate” versions; always wait for API data.
Do not parse large JSON via grep or manual truncation; use a JSON parser (jq/Python/Node).
Do not silently fall back when isDefault is missing; ask for the desired rule.
Do not paste large verbatim chunks from docs; summarize.
Do not assume auth or rate limits; treat them as unspecified unless you have evidence.

Links

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

1mo ago First seen · 46 lines · 74 tokens per session scan A aae003ac0d93

Subscribe to this mod's changes

deps-dev is a skill published in the GitHub repository itechmeat/llm-code (24 stars, last pushed 24d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 74 tokens to every session and 528 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.

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