Dependency Management Standards

Maverick's hard rules for keeping dependencies intentional, pinned, secure, and maintained.

Maverick's Rules

• Lock files are committed and reviewed — inspect lock diffs for unexpected transitive additions; never manually edit a lock file (regenerate from the manifest).
• CI and production install from the lock, never resolve fresh — npm ci, yarn install --immutable, pnpm install --frozen-lockfile, uv sync --locked, cargo install --locked, bundle install --frozen, or the ecosystem equivalent.
• Vulnerability scanning is mandatory in CI — runs on every PR plus a scheduled cadence against the default branch. Critical/high findings block merges; medium is fixed within the current iteration; false positives are suppressed only with a documented justification.
• License allow-list — acceptable by default: MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause, ISC, 0BSD, Unlicense. Copyleft (GPL/LGPL, and especially AGPL for SaaS) and unknown/no-license dependencies are blocked pending investigation. Audit transitive licenses too.
• Minimal dependency principle — no packages for trivial utilities, single-use wrappers, or stdlib-covered functionality. Do add packages for crypto/auth/security-sensitive logic — never roll your own.
• Never * or latest version specifiers. Exact pins for security-critical dependencies (auth, crypto); when in doubt, pin tighter.
• Major version bumps get dedicated PRs — one major at a time, never buried in feature PRs. Security patches fast-track after CI.
• Abandoned packages (no releases/response in 12+ months) — migrate to a maintained alternative, fork into the organisation, or inline the functionality.
• Never --force or --legacy-peer-deps — fix the underlying version conflict.

Project Implementation Lookup

Check for docs/maverick/skills/dependency-management/SKILL.md. If present, read it — it wins on specifics (library, config, conventions). If missing, proceed with these standards and note the gap in your summary.

Detecting Dependency Issues in Code Review

Pattern	Issue	Fix
Lock file not committed	Non-deterministic builds	Commit the lock file, use frozen install in CI
Lock file manually edited	Corrupted dependency resolution	Regenerate from manifest
New dependency for trivial functionality	Unnecessary surface area	Inline the logic or use standard library
Dependency with no license or copyleft license	Legal risk	Replace with a permissively licensed alternative
Major version bump buried in a large PR	Breaking changes may be missed	Isolate major bumps into dedicated PRs
* or latest in version specifiers	Unpredictable builds	Pin to a specific range
No vulnerability scanning in CI	Known CVEs may ship	Add npm audit / pip-audit / equivalent to pipeline
Dependency with no recent releases (12+ months)	Abandoned package risk	Evaluate alternatives or plan a fork
Large transitive dependency addition	Unexpected supply chain expansion	Investigate and consider lighter alternatives
--force or --legacy-peer-deps in install commands	Masking resolution conflicts	Fix the underlying version conflict

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