The problem

Developers often don't realize their project dependencies have been abandoned — npm outdated shows version lag but not how long ago a package was last published, leaving stale and potentially vulnerable packages silently lurking in codebases.

As a solution, I created stale-deps

Scan your package.json for packages that haven't been updated in a while — spot potentially abandoned npm packages instantly. Zero-dependency Node.js:

npx stale-deps

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Output:

Checking 12 packages (threshold: 365 days)...

⚠ 3 stale packages found:

PACKAGE VERSION LAST UPDATED DAYS AGO node-uuid 1.4.8 2017-03-11 2982d (8y 1m) request 2.88.2 2020-02-14 1912d (5y 3m) colors 1.4.0 2021-01-16 1576d (4y 3m)

✓ 9 packages recently updated.

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How it works

Hits the npm registry public JSON API for each dep, gets _npmPublishTime , computes age, outputs a sorted table. Batches 10 requests at a time.…