@gesslar/licensed

A simple CLI and API for generating license documentation for Node.js projects. It reads your package.json, finds your license file, and outputs formatted markdown or structured JSON listing your project license and all dependency licenses.

Installation

npm install -g @gesslar/licensed

Or as a dev dependency:

npm install --save-dev @gesslar/licensed

CLI Usage

Run from your project directory:

npx @gesslar/licensed

The tool outputs markdown to stdout that you can add to your README. The output includes:

• Your project's license with a link to the license file
• A table of all dependencies with their licenses and repository links

API Usage

You can also use licensed programmatically. Pass a FileObject pointing to a project's package.json and get back structured JSON.

import {licensed} from "@gesslar/licensed"
import {DirectoryObject} from "@gesslar/toolkit"

const cwd = new DirectoryObject("/path/to/project")
const jsonFile = cwd.getFile("package.json")
const data = await licensed(jsonFile)

The returned object has the following shape:

{
  name: "my-package",        // package name, or null
  license: "MIT",            // SPDX license identifier, or null
  licenseFile: "LICENSE.txt", // detected license filename, or null
  publicDomain: false,       // true for Unlicense, CC0-1.0
  dependencies: [
    { name: "lodash", license: "MIT", repo: "https://github.com/lodash/lodash" },
    { name: "private-pkg", license: "Unknown", repo: null },
  ]
}

Generating Markdown from the API

Use buildLicenseSection to turn the data into the same markdown the CLI produces:

import {licensed, buildLicenseSection} from "@gesslar/licensed"

const data = await licensed(jsonFile)
const markdown = buildLicenseSection({
  name: data.name,
  license: data.license,
  licenseFile: data.licenseFile,
  depResults: data.dependencies,
})

Other Exports

• cleanUrl(raw) - Normalizes repository URLs (strips git+, .git, converts SSH/git protocols to HTTPS)
• npmView(dep) - Queries the npm registry for a package's license and repository URL
• buildLicenseSection(options) - Generates a markdown license section from structured data

Requirements

• Node.js v24.13.0 or higher

License

@gesslar/licensed is released under the 0BSD.

This package includes or depends on third-party components under their own licenses:

| Dependency | License | | --- | --- | | @gesslar/toolkit | 0BSD |