What is dependency-vetting?

A read-only check of an npm or other software package before adding it to a project. It examines adoption signals, installation scripts, published files, and what the package actually does.

It is for deciding whether an unfamiliar dependency is trustworthy and worth installing, including checking install-time scripts, downloads, dependents, and network or file-system behavior.

A package can introduce supply-chain risk even when it has no known security vulnerability. This review helps identify suspicious installation behavior or a mismatch between a package’s claims and its code.

How TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit configures

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/main/.claude/skills/dependency-vetting/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit

Made for: Claude Code.

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/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dependency-vetting/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dependency-vetting)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dependency-vetting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dependency-vetting/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/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dependency-vetting"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thedecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit/dependency-vetting.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 73 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 857 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan C 3 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	$0.00073	$0.00857
Opus 5.5	$0.00029	$0.00343
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00015	$0.00171
Haiku 4.5	$0.00007	$0.00086

Measured 2mo ago against content hash ab4a48c5ec27, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

dependency-vetting scanned grade C with 3 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 2mo 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.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

- **`curl | sh` and friends.** Any install step that pipes a remote script into a shell, or `npx`-runs a second package, or registers a persistent MCP server, is a red flag. The package should do what its README says and

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- **`curl | sh` and friends.** Any install step that pipes a remote script into a shell, or `npx`-runs a second package, or registers a persistent MCP server, is a red flag. The package should do what its README says and

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

- **What it actually does vs. claims.** Read the real entry points. Network calls, child_process, filesystem writes outside its own dir, env/credential reads, and telemetry that the README doesn't disclose are all findin

.claude/skills/dependency-vetting/SKILL.md · 47 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 47 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Vet a Dependency

npm audit catches known CVEs in packages you already trust. This is the other problem: deciding whether to trust a package in the first place. The goal is an evidence-backed verdict, not a vibe.

What to gather

Pull the facts before judging. Use npm view <pkg>, the npm and GitHub pages, and the published tarball.

Downloads vs. stars vs. dependents. A package with thousands of weekly downloads, single-digit stars, and no dependents is a mismatch worth explaining. Real adoption shows up in all three. Check the download shape too: organic growth is a curve; isolated single-day spikes with dead baseline around them are manufactured.
Install scripts. Read package.json for preinstall, install, postinstall. Anything that runs on install is the highest-risk surface, read exactly what it does.
curl | sh and friends. Any install step that pipes a remote script into a shell, or npx-runs a second package, or registers a persistent MCP server, is a red flag. The package should do what its README says and nothing the README doesn't.
What it actually does vs. claims. Read the real entry points. Network calls, child_process, filesystem writes outside its own dir, env/credential reads, and telemetry that the README doesn't disclose are all findings.
Obfuscation. Minified-only source with no readable repo, eval, base64 blobs, or dynamic require of constructed strings. Legitimate packages ship readable code.
Maintainer and provenance. Account age, other packages, repo activity, whether the npm package's repo link actually matches a real, public repo. A brand-new author with one oddly-popular package warrants more scrutiny.
Typosquatting. Is the name one character off a popular package? Is it impersonating a known scope?
License sanity. Missing, contradictory, or relicensed-from-someone-else (a file marked MIT that's actually CC-BY upstream) is both a legal and a trust signal.

How to judge, and how to phrase it

Read the full file on GitHub · 47 lines

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.

2mo ago First seen · 47 lines · 73 tokens per session scan C ab4a48c5ec27

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dependency-vetting is a skill published in the GitHub repository TheDecipherist/claude-code-mastery-project-starter-kit (342 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 73 tokens to every session and 857 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it C with 3 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls, runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.