Understanding your first DriftScore

After your first scan, the Vibgrate CLI prints a DriftScore. This article explains what that number represents and how to act on it, written for both new developers and technical leaders evaluating Vibgrate.

What the DriftScore is

The DriftScore is a single number from 0 to 100 that summarizes how far your project's dependencies and tooling have drifted from current, healthy versions. It rolls many individual findings into one comparable metric so you can track upgrade health at a glance. Lower is healthier; a higher score signals more accumulated upgrade work.

Where the number comes from

The score is computed from the findings produced during a scan — outdated dependencies, risky packages, and other upgrade-drift signals across your ecosystem. To see the contributing findings, run a scan and review the output:

vg

For a structured view you can save or diff, use a format:

vg scan --format json

Acting on the score

• Start with the highest-impact findings the scan lists, since they move the score most.
• Re-run vg after changes to confirm the score improves.
• Capture a baseline so you can measure progress over time:

vg baseline

Then compare future scans:

vg scan --baseline .vibgrate/baseline.json

Keeping the score from regressing

To stop drift from creeping back in, add a gate in CI. For example, fail when errors appear:

vg scan --fail-on error

You can also enforce a maximum acceptable drift with a budget:

vg scan --drift-budget 60

Related

For the underlying methodology, see the DriftScore concept page. To track the score across your team over time, push results to Vibgrate Cloud with vg push, and read setting up a Vibgrate workspace.