Packagist Package Intelligence — PHP/Composer Health (AI)

Before you add a Composer dependency, know what you're pulling in. Give this Actor a list of Packagist package names (vendor/package) and it turns each one into a clear intelligence record: how often it's installed, how many dependencies it drags in and how many projects depend on it, when it was last released, who maintains it, its licence, its GitHub signals — and an AI risk read that tells you plainly whether a package is active, stale, or effectively abandoned.

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

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The flow

1. Paste Composer package names       2. The Actor gathers facts          3. Get an AI risk read
   (laravel/framework,          →        Packagist JSON API         →        downloads · deps · age ·
    symfony/console, ...)                 (public, no API key)                licence · maintenance · flags

1. Paste Packagist (Composer/PHP) package names into the packages field — one vendor/package per line.
2. The Actor pulls public data for each from the Packagist JSON API: metadata, versions, licence, dependencies, dependents, download counts, GitHub stars/forks/issues and the abandoned flag. 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 (latest stable), summary, type, versionCount, lastRelease (ISO timestamp) and lastReleaseAgeDays (how long since the newest release).
2. Reach — totalDownloads and monthlyDownloads from Packagist, plus dependentsCount (how many packages depend on it), so you can tell a ubiquitous library from a weekend experiment.
3. Footprint — dependenciesCount (runtime require, excluding php and platform packages like ext-*), the license and the repository URL.
4. Maintenance & reputation — maintainersCount, stars, forks, openIssues, favers, and the abandoned flag (with abandonedReplacement when Packagist names a successor).

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

• maintenanceSignal — active, maintained, stale, or abandoned, from release recency and the abandoned flag.
• popularityTier — niche, growing, popular, or ubiquitous, from download volume.
• riskFlags — short, data-backed phrases: "abandoned package" (e.g. "abandoned — use symfony/mailer"), "unmaintained (last release >18mo)", "single maintainer", "no license declared", "heavy dependency tree", "few dependents".
• 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

• PHP dependency due diligence — before a new library lands in composer.json, run a Packagist package analysis to see downloads, licence, dependency count and whether it's still maintained. Catch an abandoned package, a stale project or a single-maintainer bus factor before it's in your build.
• Supply-chain risk — audit an existing composer.lock for PHP dependency risk: surface abandoned packages, stale projects and heavy dependency trees 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, dependents count, maintenance signal and suggestedAlternatives make the call obvious.

Keywords: Packagist package analysis, Composer dependency risk, PHP supply chain, abandoned packages.

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Input

Field	Type	Notes
packages	array	Required. Composer package names as vendor/package, one per line (e.g. laravel/framework, symfony/console). Version constraints and packagist.org/packages/... URLs 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": ["laravel/framework", "symfony/console", "swiftmailer/swiftmailer"]
}

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Output example

{
  "package": "laravel/framework",
  "latestVersion": "12.0.0",
  "summary": "The Laravel Framework.",
  "license": "MIT",
  "type": "library",
  "language": "PHP",
  "totalDownloads": 593923987,
  "monthlyDownloads": 16991551,
  "stars": 34959,
  "forks": 12007,
  "openIssues": 91,
  "favers": 35448,
  "lastRelease": "2026-02-15T14:12:07+00:00",
  "lastReleaseAgeDays": 20,
  "versionCount": 1324,
  "maintainersCount": 1,
  "dependenciesCount": 28,
  "dependentsCount": 21126,
  "abandoned": false,
  "abandonedReplacement": null,
  "repository": "https://github.com/laravel/framework",
  "maintenanceSignal": "active",
  "popularityTier": "popular",
  "riskFlags": [],
  "suggestedAlternatives": ["symfony/symfony"],
  "aiSummary": "laravel/framework is an actively maintained, MIT-licensed PHP framework with tens of millions of monthly installs and over 21,000 dependent packages. It shows a healthy release cadence and no significant supply-chain risk."
}

A package that is not found on Packagist 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 one public, key-less source: the Packagist JSON API (https://packagist.org/packages/<vendor>/<package>.json) for metadata, versions, licence, dependencies, dependents, download counts, GitHub signals and the abandoned flag. No API key, no login-walled scraping.

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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, dependencies, licence, maintenance) 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

• npm Package Intelligence — The Node.js twin of this Actor: downloads, dependencies, maintenance and AI risk for any npm package.
• PyPI Package Intelligence — The Python twin: downloads, dependencies, maintenance and AI risk for any PyPI 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.