Defensible automation
for the npm supply chain
Arguss is a UC Berkeley MICS capstone project building autonomous remediation that knows when to merge, and when to ask for help.
The team
Three students. Three roles
Adrian Rosales
Code
Owns the engineering surface, engine, lenses, dashboard, deployment, and all the plumbing in between.
Sherbano Khan
Frontend
Owns the visual and UX surface, design system, dashboard polish, Observatory, and demo materials.
Huiping (Sophia) Qiu
Research & Methodology
Owns the research and evaluation methodology, threat model, comparative analysis, and write-ups.
Final showcase: August 5, 2026
The work
Why we built this
Modern software depends on hundreds of transitive npm packages, most of which the application author has never directly evaluated. A single vulnerable dependency can compromise the entire system, and the highest-impact recent attacks (Log4Shell, xz-utils, recurring npm credential theft) succeeded specifically because the malicious or vulnerable code wasn't yet in the CVE database when it was consumed.
Existing free tools split the problem in half. Detection-only scanners flag CVEs and leave remediation to humans, drowning teams in alert fatigue. Auto-PR tools open upgrade pull requests with no risk awareness, they'll merge a malicious patch the day after a maintainer takeover because the new version is newer. Arguss is built to close that gap: it auto-remediates and knows when not to.
Why this matters
The npm ecosystem is under sustained attack
These aren't hypothetical risks. They're documented incidents from the past year, the kind of attack Arguss is built to catch before it reaches a merge.
Every incident above shares the same root cause: a trusted package, maintainer, or pipeline was compromised, and the malicious version looked exactly like a normal update. Version-only tools can't catch this. Arguss checks who published the change and whether your pipeline can actually verify it, not just whether a newer version exists.
The contribution
Defensible automation
vs. Snyk
detection
Snyk flags CVEs. Arguss flags them and decides what to do about them.
vs. Dependabot
action
Dependabot opens upgrade PRs based on version availability alone. Arguss opens them only when trust signals, pipeline reality, and vulnerability severity all align.
vs. Manual review
baseline
A careful developer can do what Arguss does for one package. Arguss does it across hundreds, consistently, with reasoning every reviewer can audit.
Under the hood
What it's built with
Backend
Python · FastAPIFrontend
Server-rendered HTMLStanding on
What this work builds on
Research
Policy & standards
Beyond the showcase
Where this goes next
GitHub App migration - shipped
Mode C now acts through the arguss-bot GitHub App: per-install scoping and short-lived installation tokens minted for each run, with no long-lived credentials handled in the browser. Next up: webhook-driven re-scans so remediation becomes install-and-forget.
Multi-ecosystem support
npm was the right starting point, the most attacked, richest public API surface, most dramatic demo stories. PyPI, Maven, and Cargo are natural expansions; the engine doesn't care which ecosystem feeds it, only that the data shapes line up.
OpenSSF Scorecard integration
A per-package engineering hygiene signal (tests, CI, code review, signed releases) layered onto the existing trust lens. Filed as a follow-up to ship after the showcase.
The vision
Arguss aims to become the autonomous security engineer for open-source dependencies, continuously monitoring risk, recommending remediation, and taking action when confidence is high while escalating uncertainty to human experts.