supply-chain-sentinel

One supply-chain gate for npm projects: risky dependency changes, license policy, new vulnerabilities and SBOM drift, and GitHub Actions hardening, with one config, one report and one exit code.

supply-chain-sentinel is an orchestrator: it has no checks of its own. It runs four focused tools, merges their results, scores them and applies one shared baseline:

Check	Tool	What it catches
`tripwire`	package-tripwire	Lockfile changes since `--base`: new install scripts, typosquats, publisher/maintainer changes, integrity changes, very fresh releases, git/tarball sources, deprecated packages
`license`	license-sentinel	Dependency licenses against your policy (presets, allow/deny lists, exceptions with expiry)
`sbom`	sbom-diff-sentinel	CycloneDX SBOM of `--base` vs now: new OSV vulnerabilities (with VEX), licence changes, hash changes, downgrades, too many changes. Licence policy stays with license-sentinel
`workflows`	workflow-sentinel	GitHub Actions: unpinned actions, script injection, `pull_request_target` checkouts, broad permissions, persisted credentials…

Every finding gets a prefixed rule id (tripwire/install-script, license/denied-license, sbom/new-vulnerability, workflows/unpinned-action), so one allowlist and one severity map cover everything, and one --fail-on decides the exit code. Node.js 18+.

All four tools are regular dependencies (^1.1.0), so npm i -D supply-chain-sentinel is all you need.

Combined score

Each check that ran scores 100 minus 40 per critical, 15 per high, 5 per medium and 1 per low finding (floored at 0). The overall score is the mean of those (set "scoreWeights": { "sbom": 2 } to weight a check), capped at 49 while any critical finding is open and at 59 when a check crashed. Grades: A ≥ 90, B ≥ 80, C ≥ 70, D ≥ 60, else F. The score is in the JSON report (score.overall, score.byCheck), the text output and the Markdown table; --min-score <n> (or "minScore") also fails the run below n.

Shared baseline

Adopting a gate on an existing project usually means a wall of old findings. Record them once for all four checks and only new findings count from then on:

npx supply-chain-sentinel --update-baseline --base origin/main   # writes .supply-chain-baseline.json
npx supply-chain-sentinel --baseline .supply-chain-baseline.json

The baseline stores a fingerprint per finding (check-prefixed rule, location and evidence, not the message wording, so tool upgrades that reword messages do not resurface them). Its optional base ref becomes the default --base for both tripwire and sbom, so both diffs start from the same point. Baselined findings are listed under baselined in JSON and do not affect the exit code or the score.

Checks that do not apply are skipped with a reason: no lockfile, no workflows, or not a git repository (for tripwire you can point "tripwire": { "baseline": "deps-baseline.json" } at a baseline saved with package-tripwire instead). A check that crashes is reported as check-error and the exit code is 2, while the other checks still run.

Install and run

npm i -D supply-chain-sentinel
npx supply-chain-sentinel                        # all checks, compared with HEAD
npx supply-chain-sentinel --base origin/main --fail-on medium
npx supply-chain-sentinel --only workflows,license --offline
npx supply-chain-sentinel --format sarif > supply-chain.sarif

In a pull request on GitHub Actions the default base is origin/$GITHUB_BASE_REF; check out with fetch-depth: 0 so the base exists.

Configuration

.supply-chain-sentinel.json (or --config <file>). Shared keys apply to the combined report; per-tool keys are passed to that tool unchanged.

{
  "failOn": "high",
  "only": ["tripwire", "license", "sbom", "workflows"],
  "severity": { "tripwire/recent-publish": "low", "license/*": "high" },
  "allow": [
    { "rule": "workflows/unpinned-action", "match": "*actions/checkout*", "reason": "Pinned by Dependabot, SEC-42", "expires": "2027-01-31" },
    { "rule": "sbom/new-vulnerability", "match": "GHSA-xxxx-*", "reason": "Not reachable, see SEC-50", "expires": "2026-12-31" }
  ],
  "tripwire": { "minAge": "3d" },
  "license": { "preset": "permissive", "deny": ["AGPL-3.0-only"] },
  "sbom": { "vex": ["vex.openvex.json"], "maxChanges": 50 },
  "baseline": ".supply-chain-baseline.json",
  "minScore": 80,
  "scoreWeights": { "sbom": 2 },
  "workflows": { "trustedOwners": ["my-org"] }
}

severity changes the severity of any rule (globs such as license/* work), or turns it off.
allow suppresses findings. Each entry needs a rule and a reason, and can be narrowed with target (the check name) and match (a glob tested against the location, file and evidence). When expires (YYYY-MM-DD) has passed, the finding comes back together with an allow-expired finding. Entries that match nothing are reported as allow-unused (info). Each tool's own allowlist (inside its section) still works too.

Output and exit codes

--format text|json|sarif|markdown for stdout, plus --json, --sarif and --markdown <file> to write extra copies in one run. SARIF 2.1.0 works with GitHub code scanning.
--fail-on critical|high|medium|low|info|none (default high).
Exit code 0: passed. 1: at least one finding at or above --fail-on. 2: usage or config error, or a check could not run.
--list-rules prints every rule of every check with its default severity.

GitHub Action

on: pull_request
permissions:
  contents: read
  security-events: write   # only for the SARIF upload
jobs:
  supply-chain:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@11d5960a326750d5838078e36cf38b85af677262 # v4
        with: { persist-credentials: false, fetch-depth: 0 }
      - uses: MrLouisWright/supply-chain-sentinel@v1
        with:
          fail-on: high
          sarif: supply-chain.sarif
      - uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        if: always()
        with: { sarif_file: supply-chain.sarif }

Inputs: targets (project directory, default .), base, only, offline, fail-on, config, sarif, json, baseline, min-score, job-summary (Markdown report in the job summary, default true), args (extra CLI flags). Outputs: markdown-file, exit-code.

Library

import { check, exitCode } from 'supply-chain-sentinel';
const report = await check('.', { base: 'origin/main', checks: ['tripwire', 'workflows'], baseline: '.supply-chain-baseline.json' });
console.log(report.score.overall, report.score.grade);
process.exitCode = exitCode(report, 'high');

Module formats and types

Ships ESM and CommonJS (import and require both work, via exports), with TypeScript declarations generated from the source at build time. Tests run on Node 18/20/22 in GitHub Actions (test/), including require/import checks against the packed tarball; releases are published with npm provenance.

Requirements

Node.js 18 or newer, and git for the tripwire and sbom comparisons. Runtime dependencies: package-tripwire, license-sentinel, sbom-diff-sentinel and workflow-sentinel (and their own, e.g. yaml).

Support

If this project is useful to you, you can support its development with a donation: Buy me a coffee. It helps keep these tools maintained, documented and free for everyone.

Credit (optional)

Free to use under MIT, no attribution required. If supply-chain-sentinel helps you, a link back is appreciated:

<a href="https://louiswright.co.uk">Built with supply-chain-sentinel by Louis Wright</a>

[![Built with supply-chain-sentinel by Louis Wright](https://img.shields.io/badge/built%20with-supply--chain--sentinel-blue)](https://louiswright.co.uk)

supply-chain-sentinel