frontend-review-deps

Frontend Review — Dependencies

You are auditing the dependency health of a frontend project. This covers three areas:

1. Freshness — outdated packages and breaking update procedures
2. CVE triage — vulnerabilities weighted by actual attack vector, not just CVSS score
3. Trend watch — deprecated, abandoned, or superseded libraries that should be migrated

Procedure

1. In parallel, run:
   • scripts/audit-deps.sh --repo <client-repo>
   • scripts/audit-trend-watch.sh --repo <client-repo>
2. Read raw/deps.json and raw/trend-watch.json.
3. For each CVE finding, apply the attack-vector triage matrix below before assigning priority.
4. For each trend-watch finding (Tier 1/2/3), confirm the installed version and assess migration cost.

CVE Triage — Attack Vector Matrix

Do not use CVSS score alone. A CVSS 9.8 RCE in a devDependency has zero production impact for a browser-only SPA.

CVE Type	devDep only	Runtime (SPA)	Runtime (SSR/Edge)
RCE	ignore	ignore	P0
Prototype Pollution	ignore	P1 (check input path)	P0
ReDoS	ignore	P1 (check user input reach)	P0
Path Traversal	ignore	ignore	P0
XSS via library	ignore	P0 (HTML-generating libs)	P0
SSRF	ignore	ignore	P0
Supply Chain (postinstall malware)	CI P0	CI P0	P0

Triage procedure:

1. Run pnpm audit --prod to exclude devDeps from output.
2. Focus on Prototype Pollution / ReDoS / XSS — other types are low-risk for browser-only SPAs.
3. For each remaining finding, check whether user-controlled input can reach the vulnerable code path. If not, downgrade to P2.
4. For SSR / Edge Functions, treat RCE / Path Traversal / SSRF as P0.
5. Document every ignored CVE in kpi/audit-triage.md with the reason.

# Runtime-only CVEs (excludes devDeps)
pnpm audit --prod --audit-level=moderate --json | jq '
  .vulnerabilities | to_entries[] |
  { name: .key, severity: .value.severity,
    via: [.value.via[] | select(type=="object") | .title] }'

# Prototype Pollution / ReDoS only
pnpm audit --prod --json 2>/dev/null | jq -r '
  .vulnerabilities | to_entries[] |
  .value.via[] | select(type=="object") |
  select(.title | test("prototype|pollution|redos|regex denial"; "i")) |
  "\(.severity) \(.title) in \(.name)"' | sort -u

Trend Watch — Library Tiers

Cross-references package.json against data/trend-watch-config.json:

• Tier 1 (migrate now): Deprecated / abandoned / superseded — no rational reason to continue. Includes libraries where migration cost is low and a mature alternative exists, even if not officially deprecated (jest → vitest, axios → ky/fetch, cypress → Playwright).
• Tier 2 (plan migration): Maintenance mode / satisfaction declining / RSC-incompatible.
• Tier 3 (watch): EOL versions exist / satisfaction trending down.

For each Tier 1 finding: propose a concrete migration path and estimate effort (hours/days). For each Tier 2 finding: recommend scheduling a migration in the next 1–3 months. For each Tier 3 finding: add to the ongoing monitoring list.

Library Selection — Web Standards First

Before recommending a new dependency as a replacement, apply this order:

1. Can a Web Platform / ECMAScript standard API cover this?

Use case	Avoid	Use instead
Date / time	moment, date-fns, dayjs	Temporal (polyfill), or Date for simple cases
Array / object utilities	lodash, ramda	Array.prototype.{flatMap,findLast,groupBy}, Object.{entries,fromEntries,groupBy}, structuredClone()
HTTP requests	axios, request	fetch + AbortController
UUID generation	uuid, nanoid	crypto.randomUUID()
URL / query params	qs, query-string	URL, URLSearchParams
Number / date formatting	numeral.js	Intl.NumberFormat, Intl.DateTimeFormat

2. Tree-shakable? Only what is imported should end up in the bundle.
3. Actively maintained? Release within the last 6 months.
4. Bundle impact < 5 kb gzip? Verify with pnpm build and a bundle analyser.

Breaking Update Procedure

1. Propose as a standalone PR — never bundle with feature or refactor work.
2. Read the changelog for removed APIs; grep / ast-grep the codebase for usages.
3. Require typecheck && lint && test:ci && e2e to pass before merge.
4. If VRT snapshots exist, regenerate them in a Linux container after the upgrade.

Output

Write <client-repo>/.frontend-review/report/latest/md/deps-review.md with:

• Outdated packages table (name, current, latest, breaking?)
• CVE findings after attack-vector triage (priority, package, type, reason for priority)
• Trend watch findings by tier (Tier 1: migration now, Tier 2: plan, Tier 3: monitor)
• Ignored CVEs with justification (for kpi/audit-triage.md)
• Recommended PRs: update batches + migration starting points

Boundaries

• Do NOT assess TypeScript / lint / dead code — that's frontend-review-hygiene.
• Do NOT run the AI pentest or check HTML sinks — that's frontend-review-security.
• Do NOT touch source files in the client repo.

Reference

• Checklist: 02-dependencies.md, 27-dependency-audit.md, 28-trend-watch.md
• Data: data/trend-watch-config.json, data/trend-watch-history.json
• Scripts: scripts/audit-deps.sh, scripts/audit-trend-watch.sh, scripts/fetch-trend-data.sh
• Phase: week-1-ci-baseline.md