Triage every dependency update like a supply-chain investigation
The solo maintainer of the karasu modeling language runs dependency updates through an AI skill that investigates each Dependabot PR before anyone merges: release notes, the diff between tags, publisher or ownership changes, install-time scripts, lockfile edges and known advisories, written up as merge, hold or reject recommendations in a design doc. In the week of Oct 10–17 three triage rounds fed 88 merged PRs (16 from Dependabot) and 12 architecture decision records, and the process caught a rebuilt lockfile silently moving a package off the reviewed version.
How it works
- Collect every open Dependabot PR
- Trace each upstream: release notes, tag diff, ownership changes, install scripts, lockfile edges, advisories, publish age
- Write merge / hold / reject recommendations into a design doc
- Human decides every merge
- Promote the doc to an ADR so any version's history is traceable
- Apply project rules such as a 7-day cooldown to every round
Why it’s worth knowing
Every routine version bump gets a detective's workup — ownership changes, install scripts and all — before a human is allowed to merge it.
Where it’s from
Summarized from a public post on dev.to. See the original ↗