Supply-chain hygiene for Emacs: LLM review of package upgrades

Emacs has no sandbox. Every package you install runs arbitrary Lisp with your full privileges: your files, your credentials, your network. This makes me really scared of installing new packages, or upgrading existing ones. The packages most of us use are not vetted artifacts: MELPA builds from some repository (usually unsigned) commit, many packages are maintained by a single person, and nobody audits what lands in a given update. A maintainer's account takeover, or a repository sold to a new owner, turns M-x package-upgrade-all into remote code execution on your machine. There is even a subtler vector unique to this ecosystem: recipe redirection. A one-line change to a MELPA recipe can silently point an existing package name at a different repository. The answer isn't to stop upgrading, but to make upgrades deliberate: pin every package to an exact commit and review the diffs before merging anything. Manually reviewing diffs is not only cumbersome but needs a high level of expertise in Emacs Lisp, so my solution is to have an LLM do a first-pass security audit of the changes before they get to execute. This post showcases the setup I use, built on straight.el, Magit and gptel. Table of Contents The setup at a glance Step 1: verify the straight.el bootstrap Step 2: pin everything Step 3: review diffs before merging Step 4: LLM-powered review of the diff The upgrade workflow Caveats and final thoughts