Dependency Debt: The Hidden Tax on Every Feature

The Compounding Problem

Technical debt gets all the attention. But there's a quieter form of debt that accumulates faster and costs more: dependency debt.

Every time you add a dependency, you're making a bet. You're betting that:

• The maintainers will keep it updated
• Security vulnerabilities will be patched quickly
• Breaking changes won't derail your roadmap
• The dependency's dependencies won't cause conflicts

Most of these bets go bad eventually. The question is when, and whether you'll be ready.

Measuring What You Can't See

The problem with dependency debt is visibility. You can't manage what you can't measure. Traditional tools show you a list of packages. They don't show you:

• Which dependencies are actually used vs. installed
• How deeply a dependency is woven into your code
• What would break if you removed or updated it
• Which functions create the tightest coupling

This is where code intelligence changes the game. When you can visualize your entire dependency graph—not just packages, but actual function calls and data flows—you can finally see the true cost of each dependency. This visibility is especially critical for legacy modernization projects.

The LOOM Approach

LOOM maps every connection in your codebase. Not just imports—actual usage. You can see exactly which functions call which dependencies, how data flows through third-party code, and what the blast radius would be if something changed.

This visibility transforms dependency management from guesswork into engineering.