blindspot

Scans Node.js projects and detects missing common npm utilities (DX blindspots).

What problem this solves

Many Node.js projects reinvent the wheel or use raw APIs when battle-tested packages exist. This tool scans your codebase and identifies patterns that suggest you might benefit from adding a dedicated package.

Installation

npx blindspot .

Or install globally:

npm install -g blindspot
blindspot /path/to/project

Usage

# Scan current directory
blindspot .

# Scan specific project
blindspot /path/to/project

# JSON output (for CI/scripts)
blindspot . --json

Example Output

📦 blindspot
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Project: my-app
Files scanned: 83
Dependencies: 30

Found 2 potential DX gaps:

┌─ HTTP Request Retry/Resilience
│  Category: Networking
│  Confidence: ████████░░ 85%
│  Reason: HTTP calls detected without retry/resilience patterns
│
│  Recommended packages:
│    npm install p-retry
│    npm install axios-retry
└─────────────────────────────────────────

┌─ Logging Abstraction
│  Category: Observability
│  Confidence: ████████░░ 80%
│  Reason: heavy console.log usage without structured logging
│
│  Recommended packages:
│    npm install pino
│    npm install winston
└─────────────────────────────────────────

How It Works

1. Scans all .js, .ts, .tsx files (ignores node_modules, dist)
2. Reads package.json to check existing dependencies
3. Runs rules that detect patterns via regex + dependency absence
4. Filters results with confidence > 60%
5. Outputs sorted by confidence (highest first)

Supported Gap Types

ID	Category	Detects
env-management	Configuration	process.env usage without dotenv
cli-parsing	CLI	process.argv or bin entry without commander/yargs
logging	Observability	Heavy console.log without pino/winston
scheduler	Scheduling	setInterval without node-cron
config-validation	Configuration	Config/env without zod/joi validation
http-retry	Networking	fetch/axios calls without retry logic
testing	Testing	No test framework in multi-file project
file-watching	Development	fs.watch without chokidar

Roadmap

• Custom rule configuration
• Ignore specific rules via CLI flag
• Auto-fix suggestions (add to package.json)
• GitHub Action integration
• More detection rules (rate limiting, caching, etc.)

License

MIT