5 Useful npx Helpers

Published on Aug 12, 2026, filed under development. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

npx allows you to run Node.js packages right away. Here are five npx-suitable packages that I find particularly helpful—unless you already know and use them, you might find them useful, too!

cspell

cspell is a spell checker which I’ve recently started to use in addition to other editing tools. While it needs active maintenance to whitelist terms—use it with a config file—, it’s handy for quick typo checks.

Run it like npx cspell **/*.md.

markdown-link-check

For anyone writing and hosting content in Markdown, markdown-link-check is a great tool to… check the links in these Markdown files. Here, too, it’s advisable to use a config, but then it’s pretty effective in keeping link rot at bay.

Run it in the folder to be checked, for example like npx --node-options='--no-deprecation' markdown-link-check -c ~/markdown-link-check.json (here with a config file).

image-guard

This is a tool I myself created to automate near-lossless image compression in code repositories (I’ve always disliked needlessly large assets)—and while I have it set up as an automated safety in my main repos, Image Guard is actually pretty nice to quickly compress images on the command line:

Run npx image-guard, in the respective folder.

I held back here! I think more of my own tools work great with npx: npx hihtml checks the respective folder on HTML conformance and link rot issues (with its own link checker), npx html-minifier-next --zero is a zero-config command for (highly customizable) web page minification, npx obsohtml allows to check for obsolete and deprecated HTML, npx css-dedup . analyzes CSS declaration repetition and names opportunities for optimization, and npx htaccess-punk allows to instantly check redirects in .htaccess files!

npm-check-updates

After playing with npm-check, too, I at some point landed on npm-check-updates to do quick package.json checks whenever I work in a new repository or when there’s the need to take care of dependency updates outside of automated dependency management.

Run it in a folder with a package.json: npx npm-check-updates. (As with any of these commands, they can work even better using an alias.)

knip

Knip is similar to npm-check-updates, but extends to files and exports. Sometimes, Knip comes first to mind and I just run that; at other times, I consciously opt for it in order to perform a more thorough check. One malus: The file and export checks regularly include false positives.

Run npx knip from pretty much anywhere.

_ And that’s it—a handful of useful helpers. What are your own favorites? Please share them, too (I might even feature them on Frontend Dogma)!

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)