abandoncheck

Every dependency in a tree was chosen at some point, often years ago, and the question that matters later is a plain one: is anyone still looking after this thing? abandoncheck answers it without guessing. You supply the factual signals you already have — whether the repository is archived, how long since the last release and the last commit, how many commits landed in the last 90 days, how many maintainers are active, and how many issues sit open — and it returns a verdict, a score, the bands those signals fall into, and the exact reasons behind the number.

Nothing is fetched and nothing is inferred about the code itself. An archived repository settles the question on its own: the score is 0 and the verdict is abandoned, no matter how fresh the other signals look. Otherwise the score starts at 100 and loses points in a fixed order for missing or stale release information, missing or stale commit information, a silent last 90 days, and a thin maintainer bench — never below 0. The open issue count is echoed back in the signals and deliberately never scored: a busy tracker can mean a popular project as easily as a neglected one, and this tool sticks to signals that point one way.

The bands make the score auditable at a glance. A release 180 days old or newer is fresh, then aging to 365, stale to 730, and dormant beyond that; with no release information the band is unknown. Commits run on a tighter clock: active to 90 days, slowing to 180, quiet to 365, and silent beyond that. Scores of 80 and up read as maintained, 50 and up as at_risk, anything above 0 as likely_abandoned, and 0 as abandoned. When no deduction applies at all, the single reason is "no adverse signals"; otherwise each reason names the deduction that fired, in the order it was applied.

Malformed input — a missing, empty, or non-string name, a missing or non-boolean archived, or any optional count that is not an integer of at least 0 — is a validation error naming the offending path, with no partial result. Unknown extra fields are ignored. The computation is pure and local: no network, no configuration, and no repository is read or touched.

CLI

npx @reneturcios/abandoncheck check --input args.json
npx @reneturcios/abandoncheck --version

args.json contains the full arguments object:

{
  "name": "leftpad",
  "archived": false,
  "last_release_days": 45,
  "last_commit_days": 12,
  "recent_commits_90d": 18,
  "maintainer_count": 3,
  "open_issues": 27
}

The result is printed as JSON:

{
  "name": "leftpad",
  "verdict": "maintained",
  "score": 100,
  "signals": {
    "archived": false,
    "last_release_band": "fresh",
    "last_commit_band": "active",
    "recent_commits_90d": 18,
    "maintainer_count": 3,
    "open_issues": 27
  },
  "reasons": ["no adverse signals"]
}

Absent optional signals echo as null in signals, and their bands are "unknown". Exit codes: 0 on success, 1 on a runtime error (including an unreadable or invalid input file, or invalid input), 2 on a usage error.

Related MCP server: Shipshape MCP

MCP server

npx -y @reneturcios/abandoncheck mcp

MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "abandoncheck": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@reneturcios/abandoncheck", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

• check_dep_maintenance — Judge whether one dependency is maintained, from caller-supplied factual signals only.

  • name (string, required, non-empty) — dependency name

  • archived (boolean, required) — whether the dependency's repository is archived

  • last_release_days (integer, optional, at least 0) — days since the last release; omit if none

  • last_commit_days (integer, optional, at least 0) — days since the last commit; omit if unknown

  • recent_commits_90d (integer, optional, at least 0) — commits in the last 90 days

  • maintainer_count (integer, optional, at least 0) — number of active maintainers

  • open_issues (integer, optional, at least 0) — open issue count; reported, never scored

  Returns {name, verdict, score, signals, reasons}, where signals is {archived, last_release_band, last_commit_band, recent_commits_90d, maintainer_count, open_issues}.

Docker

docker run -i ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/abandoncheck
docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/w" ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/abandoncheck check --input /w/args.json

Development

npm install
npm run build   # tsc -> dist/
npm test        # tsx --test test/*.test.ts (pure local, no network)
npm run dev     # run the CLI from source

License

MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 Rene Turcios