Search plus downloads plus stars is table stakes; the parts that change a decision are the dependency tree at a depth you choose, and the version list with publish dates, which is how you tell a maintained package from an abandoned one. Extracting the usage snippet out of the README is the small convenience that saves reading a long document to find one import line.
An npm registry lookup server. It searches, fetches package context, and compares candidates, so a library decision is made against real numbers rather than recall.
- Registry search with optional ranking weights and paging
- Keyword search with an AND or OR operator across the tags you name
- Enriched package info: registry metadata, last-week downloads, and the GitHub repository details — stars, forks, license — where they exist
- The README for a package or a specific version, truncated at a length you choose
- A likely usage snippet extracted from that README, for the calling pattern without the prose
- Downloads for the last day, week or month
- Every published version with its publish date and dist tags, bounded by a limit or a date
- The dependency tree to a depth you set, with dev dependencies included if you want them
- Several packages compared side by side on downloads, stars and license
No account and no key. Node.js v18.17 or newer; run it with npx -y npmlens-mcp@latest over stdio, from the npm package npmlens-mcp, currently 0.1.12. It makes live requests to npm and to GitHub when tools are called, and to nothing else — there is no arbitrary URL fetching. GITHUB_TOKEN is optional and only raises the GitHub rate limit.
One command — npx -y npmlens-mcp@latest