Components Highlighting (maintainers, packages and infrastructure)

[fraxken]

Context

@nodesecure/scanner supports highlighting of different tree components such as:

• packages
• maintainers/contacts
• infrastructure identifiers (URLs, IPs, etc.)

More information here.

The scanner accepts a highlight option and populates a highlighted field in the returned payload:

// Options passed to scanner
highlight?: {
  contacts?: Contact[];
  packages?: string[] | Record<string, string[] | SemverRange>;
  identifiers?: string[];
};

// Populated in returned Payload
highlighted: {
  contacts: IlluminatedContact[];
  packages: string[];
  identifiers: Identifier[];
};

There are two topics to address:

1. CLI flags — expose packages and identifiers highlight options to the user via CLI arguments
2. Front-end integration — implement a new highlight page/view that surfaces everything that is highlighted in the payload

Current State

What already works

• --contacts / -c flag is parsed in bin/index.js and passed to the scanner as highlight.contacts in src/commands/scanner.js (all three commands: cwd, from, auto)
• Contact parsing is handled by src/commands/parsers/contacts.js
• NodeSecureDataSet (in workspaces/vis-network/src/dataset.ts) reads payload.highlighted.contacts and exposes isHighlighted(contact) for UI consumption
• The maintainers panel (public/components/views/home/maintainers/maintainers.js) uses isHighlighted() to apply a visual class and sort highlighted contacts to the top
• NodeSecureNetwork (workspaces/vis-network/src/network.ts) has highlightMultipleNodes(nodeIds) available

What is missing

Area	Gap
CLI	No --packages flag; highlight.packages is never passed to the scanner
CLI	No --identifiers flag; highlight.identifiers is never passed to the scanner
UI	Highlighted packages are not visually distinguished in the network graph or any panel
UI	Highlighted identifiers are not surfaced anywhere in the UI
UI	No dedicated "highlight summary" page/view exists

CLI

• maintainers / contacts (already supported via --contacts / -c)
• packages
• identifiers (infrastructure)

--packages flag

Add an option (e.g. --packages or -p) to defaultScannerCommand() in bin/index.js that accepts a comma-separated list of package names (optionally with semver ranges).

The parsed value must be forwarded as highlight.packages in all three scanner commands (cwd, from, auto) inside src/commands/scanner.js, following the same pattern already used for contacts.

A parser similar to src/commands/parsers/contacts.js may be needed for packages.

The scanner type allows two shapes:

packages: string[]
// or
packages: Record<string, string[] | SemverRange>

Start with the simpler string[] form (package names / package@version strings).

--identifiers flag

Add an option (e.g. --identifiers or -i) that accepts a comma-separated list of identifier strings (URLs, IPs, encoded strings, etc.) and forwards them as highlight.identifiers.

UI

Implement a new highlight panel/view that shows everything that is highlighted in the returned payload.

Highlight summary view

Add a new view (similar in structure to existing views under public/components/views/) that aggregates all highlighted items from the payload and presents them in one place:

• Highlighted contacts — names/emails, number of packages they maintain
• Highlighted packages — package name, version, direct/transitive flag
• Highlighted identifiers — identifier string, which package(s) it appears in

The view should be reachable from the command palette or a dedicated nav entry.

Empty state

If the payload contains no highlighted items at all (contacts, packages, and identifiers are all empty arrays), the view should display an informative empty state rather than a blank panel.

[ErwanRaulo]

CLI packages : #734