Install-Time Lifecycle Script Introduction and Content Diff Gate

Answer one question before you merge a dependency-bump pull request: does the new version run code at install time that the old version did not run, and what does that code do?

For each version pair, the Actor gets the old artifact and the new artifact from the public registry, reads the install-time scripts of both, and reports every script that the new version adds, removes or changes. A long-standing install script is not news, so only a difference is reported. Each added or changed script is scanned line by line for the shapes that an install-time attack needs, and the pair gets a clean, review or block verdict.

The Actor keeps no state between runs. It reads the old version from the registry inside the same run, so you keep no baseline.

What the Actor reads

A script counts as changed when the command text changes or when the content of the file it names changes. That content diff is the point:

node install.js

Input

Every field has a schema default, so a run with empty input {} succeeds and reports the four example pairs.

The built-in flag patterns

A line that only holds a comment runs nothing, so the scan steps over it.

Verdicts

A business verdict is never a failed run. A blocked bump, an unreachable registry, a malformed pair and a run with zero findings all end as a succeeded run that carries the verdict in the dataset and in the run status message.

Output

One dataset row for each version pair, plus one run-summary record.

The summary record holds runVerdict, pairsRequested, pairsInspected, the verdict counts, the script counts, flaggedScriptCount, invalidCount and unreadableCount.

Billing (pay per event)

Bounds and safety

• HTTP only. No browser, no proxy, no key, no secret and no external database.
• Three fixed public hosts: registry.npmjs.org, pypi.org and files.pythonhosted.org. A buyer string never becomes a host, a redirect is followed by hand at most twice, and only to a host in that list, so a private or reserved target cannot be reached.
• 200 version pairs for each run, 4 downloads at a time, a 30 s timeout for each call, 25 MB for each artifact (64 MB limit), 1 MB for each file read out of an archive, and at most 12 files read out of one archive.
• The Actor never unpacks a whole artifact. It reads the manifest and the few files the install scripts name. An absolute path, a parent-directory path and a member that declares more than the file limit are all refused.
• A buyer-supplied flag pattern is a literal substring, so no pattern can make the scan slow.

Local use

uv sync
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .
apify run            # uses .actor/default_input.json