meow
npmv14.1.0CLI app helper
Safe to adopt
Yes — meow scores well across adoption, maintenance, weight, supply chain, and licensing. 36.7M downloads per week and 1 known dependents. Last published 201 days ago. 2 releases in the last 2 years.
- AAdoption: grade A, Excellent.
36.7M downloads per week and 1 known dependents.
- BMaintenance: grade B, Good.
Last published 201 days ago. 2 releases in the last 2 years.
- AWeight: grade A, Excellent.
Zero runtime dependencies, about 401 KB installed.
- BSupply chain: grade B, Good.
This package has a single maintainer (bus factor of 1).
- ALicense: grade A, Excellent.
MIT — permissive, with no copyleft found in the dependency tree.
Grades are computed deterministically from registry metadata collected by PackageGraph — downloads, dependents, publish dates, the resolved dependency tree, maintainer count, and declared licenses. No third-party scores are used.
Install cost
What you actually take on by adding meow to a project.
Runtime packages this one declares itself.
Distinct packages in the full runtime tree, deduplicated the way a package manager would.
Unpacked size of this package plus its entire runtime tree.
Longest resolved dependency chain below this package.
Compatibility
- Node.js
- node >=20
- Module format
- ESM only
- TypeScript
- No bundled types
- Install scripts
- None
Quick start
A usage example from the meow README.
#!/usr/bin/env node
import meow from 'meow';
import foo from './lib/index.js';
const cli = meow(`
Usage
$ foo <input>
Options
--rainbow, -r Include a rainbow
Examples
$ foo unicorns --rainbow
🌈 unicorns 🌈meow vs the alternatives
Packages solving a similar problem in the npm ecosystem, compared on the signals that drive an adoption decision.
| Package | Weekly downloads | Dependents | License | Last release |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| meowthis page | 36.7M | 1 | MIT | 6 months ago |
| commander | 451.1M | 11 | MIT | 1 day ago |
| yargs-parser | 178.8M | 2 | ISC | 1 day ago |
| dashdash | 0 | 1 | MIT | 1 day ago |
| yargs | 0 | 12 | MIT | 1 day ago |
| getopts | 4.2M | 1 | MIT | 1 day ago |
Dependencies
Declared by meow v14.1.0. Runtime dependencies are installed with the package; dev dependencies are not.
Dev (29)
Used by
Popular packages that depend on meow.
Relationship graph
Dependencies (left) and dependents (right) of meow.
Frequently installed together
Lodash modular utilities.
An AST-based pattern checker for JavaScript.
Opinionated, caching, retrying fetch client
A globbing fs.watch wrapper built from the best parts of other fine watch libs.
An optionally-asynchronous forEach with an interesting interface.
Given a possibly case-variant version of an existing filesystem path, returns the case-exact, normalized version as stored in the filesystem.
Non-blocking stdout stream
Cross platform child_process#spawn and child_process#spawnSync
the most correct and second fastest glob implementation in JavaScript
Native Abstractions for Node.js: C++ header for Node 0.8 -> 26 compatibility
Parse sass files and extract a graph of imports
Release history
2 releases in the last two years, typically about 38 days apart.
| Version | Published | Size | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14.1.0latest | 6 months ago | 401 KB | MIT |
| 14.0.0 | 11 months ago | 461 KB | MIT |
| 13.2.0 | 2 years ago | 409 KB | MIT |
| 13.1.0 | 2 years ago | 408 KB | MIT |
| 13.0.0 | 2 years ago | 410 KB | MIT |
| 12.1.1 | 3 years ago | 480 KB | MIT |
| 12.1.0 | 3 years ago | 381 KB | MIT |
| 12.0.1 | 3 years ago | 31 KB | MIT |
| 12.0.0 | 3 years ago | 31 KB | MIT |
| 11.0.0 | 3 years ago | 25 KB | MIT |
| 10.1.5 | 3 years ago | 25 KB | MIT |
| 10.1.4 | 4 years ago | 25 KB | MIT |
| 10.1.3 | 4 years ago | 24 KB | MIT |
| 10.1.2 | 4 years ago | 24 KB | MIT |
| 10.1.1 | 5 years ago | 24 KB | MIT |
Overview
meow is an npm package that cLI app helper. It is extremely widely used, with about 36.7M downloads per week and 1 known dependents in the graph. The latest version is 14.1.0, released under the MIT license.
Who should use it
Teams working in the npm ecosystem who need cLI app helper and value a battle-tested, widely-adopted solution.
When not to use it
Consider an alternative if you need to minimize your dependency tree, have first-class TypeScript types out of the box, or if a more actively-maintained option better fits your npm stack.
Pros
- Large, well-established user base (36.7M weekly downloads).
- Clear open-source license (MIT).
Cons
- Large dependency tree (29 direct dependencies) increases install size and audit surface.
- No bundled TypeScript types (may require a separate @types package).
Auto-generated from collected registry metadata. No external claims are inferred.
Maintainers
Funding
Frequently asked questions
Should I use meow?
Yes — meow scores well across adoption, maintenance, weight, supply chain, and licensing. 36.7M downloads per week and 1 known dependents. Last published 201 days ago. 2 releases in the last 2 years.
How do I install meow?
Run `npm install meow` to add meow to your npm project.
What license is meow released under?
meow is distributed under the MIT license.
How popular is meow?
meow has approximately 36,681,347 downloads per week and 1 known dependent packages.
Is meow still maintained?
The most recent release of meow (v14.1.0) was published 6 months ago.
Does meow run install scripts?
No. meow does not define preinstall, install, or postinstall scripts, so installing it does not execute publisher-supplied code.