README.md

Agent Workflows

Quickstarts for AI coding agents that need deterministic, machine-readable dependency checks.

Universal Workflows

These commands work with any AI coding agent.

# Check-only (read-only report)
depfresh --output json

# Safe write (minor + patch)
depfresh --write --mode minor

# Verify each dependency update, revert failures
depfresh --write --verify-command "pnpm test"

# CI gate mode (exit 1 when outdated deps exist)
depfresh --fail-on-outdated --output json

Prompt Patterns

Tell your agent what to do with the output. Here are some patterns that work well:

Read-only audit:

Run depfresh in JSON mode, summarize summary/meta fields, then propose safe updates.

depfresh --output json

Guarded writes:

Check outdated dependencies with depfresh JSON output, group by diff severity, and apply minor/patch updates only.

depfresh --write --mode minor --verify-command "pnpm test"

CI enforcement:

Run depfresh as a machine-readable check and return a change plan from JSON summary/meta fields.

depfresh --fail-on-outdated --output json

Contract Discovery

Before automating, fetch the CLI contract directly:

depfresh --help-json
# or
depfresh capabilities --json

The response includes supported flags, valid enum values, defaults, and exit code semantics.