NuGet Package Intelligence — .NET Package Health (AI)

Before you add a .NET dependency, know what you're pulling in. Give this Actor a list of NuGet package IDs and it turns each one into a clear intelligence record: how often it's downloaded, how many versions it has shipped, when it was last released, who publishes it, its license — and an AI risk read that tells you plainly whether a package is active, stale, or effectively abandoned.

You bring the package IDs. It hands back a dependency due-diligence sheet.

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The flow

1. Paste NuGet package IDs         2. The Actor gathers facts            3. Get an AI risk read
   (Newtonsoft.Json, Serilog,  →      NuGet search + registration   →      downloads · versions · age ·
    AutoMapper, ...)                   APIs (public, no API key)            license · publisher · flags

1. Paste NuGet (.NET) package IDs into the packages field — one per line.
2. The Actor pulls public data for each: the NuGet search API for metadata, versions, downloads, publisher-verified status and license, and the NuGet registration API for the latest publish date. No API key, no scraping of login-walled pages.
3. The AI layer reads the facts and returns a maintenance signal, a popularity tier, concrete risk flags and a two-sentence summary — grounded only in the data, never invented.

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What you get per package

For every package, the Actor returns:

1. Identity & release — latestVersion, description, versionCount, lastRelease (ISO timestamp) and lastReleaseAgeDays (how long since the newest release).
2. Reach — totalDownloads (lifetime downloads across all versions), so you can tell a ubiquitous library from a weekend experiment.
3. Footprint — tags, authors, projectUrl and license (SPDX expression or license URL).
4. Trust signals — isVerified (whether the publisher is a verified owner on nuget.org), a strong supply-chain trust indicator.

Then the AI layer (OpenAI gpt-4o-mini, a fast and low-cost model) adds:

• maintenanceSignal — active, maintained, stale, or abandoned, from release recency.
• popularityTier — niche, growing, popular, or ubiquitous, from lifetime download volume.
• riskFlags — short, data-backed phrases: "unmaintained (last release >18mo)", "unverified publisher", "no license declared", "few published versions", "low adoption", "pre-1.0 (unstable API)", "single author".
• aiSummary — two factual sentences on the package and its risk posture.
• suggestedAlternatives — only well-known, widely-trusted substitutes for the same job, else [].

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Three ways people use it

• .NET dependency due diligence — before a new library lands in a .csproj or packages.config, run a NuGet package analysis to see downloads, license, version history and whether it's still maintained. Catch an unverified publisher, a missing license or a pre-1.0 unstable API before it's in your build.
• Supply-chain risk — audit an existing dependency list for .NET dependency risk: surface unmaintained packages, stale projects and low-adoption or unverified publishers across your whole stack in one run. A standing input for your supply chain security reviews.
• Library selection — comparing candidates for the same job? Line them up and let download tier, maintenance signal and suggestedAlternatives make the call obvious.

Keywords: NuGet package analysis, .NET dependency risk, supply chain, unmaintained packages.

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Input

Field	Type	Notes
packages	array	Required. NuGet package IDs, one per line (e.g. Newtonsoft.Json, Serilog). nuget.org/packages/... URLs and version suffixes are tolerated and normalised.
maxResults	integer	Cap how many packages to analyze. Default 200.
maxConcurrency	integer	Packages processed in parallel. Default 6.
model	string	OpenAI model override. Default gpt-4o-mini.

Minimal input example

{
  "packages": ["Newtonsoft.Json", "Serilog", "AutoMapper"]
}

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Output example

{
  "package": "Newtonsoft.Json",
  "latestVersion": "13.0.4",
  "description": "Json.NET is a popular high-performance JSON framework for .NET",
  "license": "https://www.nuget.org/packages/Newtonsoft.Json/13.0.4/license",
  "authors": ["James Newton-King"],
  "tags": ["json"],
  "totalDownloads": 9325394018,
  "lastRelease": "2024-11-13T00:00:00.000Z",
  "lastReleaseAgeDays": 333,
  "versionCount": 53,
  "isVerified": true,
  "projectUrl": "https://www.newtonsoft.com/json",
  "maintenanceSignal": "maintained",
  "popularityTier": "ubiquitous",
  "riskFlags": [],
  "suggestedAlternatives": ["System.Text.Json"],
  "aiSummary": "Newtonsoft.Json is a ubiquitous, verified-publisher JSON library with billions of lifetime downloads and a long, stable release history. It shows no significant supply-chain risk."
}

A package that is not found on NuGet comes back with the same shape plus an error field (and is not charged).

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Pay-per-event pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event billing with a single event:

Event	Price	Charged when
package-analyzed	$0.10	Once per package successfully analyzed (facts gathered + AI risk read produced).

The Actor logs its OpenAI token usage and the estimated AI cost per package at the end of every run, so the event price always stays safely above the model cost.

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Data source

Everything comes from public, key-less sources: the NuGet search API (https://azuresearch-usnc.nuget.org/query?q=packageid:<id>) for metadata, versions, downloads, publisher-verified status and license, and the NuGet registration API (https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration5-semver1/<id>/index.json) for the latest publish date. A missing publish date is handled gracefully — the record still ships, just without lastRelease.

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Setup

The AI layer calls the OpenAI API. Set the environment variable / secret OPENAI_API_KEY on the Actor. The fact-gathering step (downloads, versions, license, publisher) needs no key.

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Use it from an AI agent (Apify MCP server)

This Actor is available through the Apify MCP server, so AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, or anything that speaks MCP) can call it as a tool — hand it a list of packages and read back the intelligence records — with no custom integration code.

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Run it locally

npm install
# put your input in storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
apify run -p

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Related actors

• PyPI Package Intelligence — The Python twin of this Actor: downloads, dependencies, maintenance and AI risk for any PyPI package.
• npm Package Intelligence — The Node.js twin: downloads, dependencies, maintenance and AI risk for any npm package.
• GitHub Repo Analyzer — Health, activity and maintenance signals for any GitHub repository.
• CVE Vulnerability Lookup — Look up known vulnerabilities and severity for packages and software.

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Part of the No Niner toolkit — no-code web scraping, enrichment & AI data tools, all pay-per-use. Browse the full set at noniner.io.