Is optimist healthy, maintained, and safe?
Probably not. optimist has gone quiet for over two years and shows the hallmarks of an abandoned package.
The verdict
optimist earns a health score of 35/100, a high risk rating, computed deterministically from live npm release history, maintainer data, and the OSV vulnerability database. Probably not. optimist has gone quiet for over two years and shows the hallmarks of an abandoned package.
The last sign of life was 6 February 2014, more than 12 years ago (4604 days). By any practical measure the package looks abandoned. Historically it released far more frequently, so the current silence reads as a genuine collapse in velocity rather than a natural gap. Two maintainers are listed, better than a lone author, but still a thin bench if one steps away.
Security-wise, optimist currently has a clean OSV record, with no published advisories. Keep in mind that reflects what's been disclosed, not a guarantee of safety.
Treat optimist as a liability to manage: review the evidence above, pin or patch, and evaluate alternatives. This is a one-time snapshot of a single package. Real projects depend on dozens or hundreds of packages, and any one of them can drift or be compromised between releases. Run your own package.json through the free health check, or have OSPulse monitor your whole dependency tree continuously.
Evidence trail: deterministic, auditable
Key facts
- Latest version
- v0.6.1
- Last release
- 6 February 2014 (4604 days ago)
- Total releases
- 39
- First release
- 21 December 2010
- Package age
- 15.7 years
- Maintainers
- 2
- Known advisories
- 0
- Confidence
- High
Frequently asked
Is optimist still maintained?
It doesn't appear to be. The last release was 6 February 2014, over two years ago, which usually indicates an abandoned package.
Does optimist have known security vulnerabilities?
No advisories are currently recorded for optimist in the OSV database. That means none have been publicly disclosed and indexed, so it is not a guarantee of safety.
Is optimist safe to use?
Probably not. optimist has gone quiet for over two years and shows the hallmarks of an abandoned package. OSPulse rates it 35/100 (high risk) based on release recency, cadence, maintainer bus factor and known vulnerabilities.
Other npm packages we've checked
optimist is one package. What about the other hundreds in your tree?
Paste your own package.json into the free health check for an instant snapshot, or let OSPulse monitor your whole dependency tree continuously, before your CVE scanner wakes up.
Data from the npm registry & OSV.dev · snapshot generated 2026-09-15 · scores are deterministic and recomputed on each refresh.