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