When you install a package with npm, it reports "added M packages by N contributors". This is really helpful metric!
Sometimes I split up my packages into several subpackages, but you still only have to trust me. The number of contributors is often more important.
Related Posts
The most common selling point I hear for Nix is having a list of all the packages you need.
On a traditional Linux distro, I just install things and forget about them. A curated, commented list would certainly be handy when I have a new system.
One nice feature of cargo that I wasn't previously aware of: you don't need to do anything after updating your Cargo.toml.
In npm, you need to remember to `npm i` after changing package.json. It's not declarative and the state can get out of sync.
I've been really enjoying paru as a pacman substitute on Arch Linux: https://github.com/Morganamilo/paru
It allows you to update both normal and AUR packages in one go, which is super convenient. It also shows you PKGBUILD files, so there's still a human audit step for AUR.