Hi everyone. I've been using Windsurf for a few months now and overall, it's been a fantastic boost for my team's productivity, especially around contract negotiation and vendor comparison workflows. However, I've hit a recurring snag that's starting to impact our adoption.
The AI assistant keeps suggesting npm packages that either don't exist or are severely deprecated. For example, just yesterday it recommended using `axios-fetch-adapter` for a specific HTTP client optimization. After wasting time trying to install it, we discovered there's no such package on the npm registry. Another time it suggested `react-data-grid-v2`, which is an old, unsupported version.
This is more than a minor annoyance—it breaks trust with the junior developers on my team and can derail a sprint. We've tried to be specific with prompts, but it still happens.
I'm looking for practical strategies from other teams. Specifically:
* **Configuration tweaks:** Are there settings in the VS Code extension or Windsurf config to tighten this up, perhaps by prioritizing known/verified sources?
* **Prompting discipline:** Has anyone found a reliable prompt pattern that minimizes these "hallucinations" for package suggestions?
* **Workflow fixes:** Are you running a quick `npm view ` check as a manual step, or have you built a linter rule to catch this?
I'd love to hear real-world benchmarks on how you've handled this. A case study from a team that successfully mitigated this would be incredibly helpful.
Best, Julie