You can use pnpm instead of npm. pnpm has a "Delay dependency updates" feature where you can install package versions that are x old only.
See https://pnpm.io/supply-chain-security#delay-dependency-updates
Edit: I just found out, that this can also be specified in npm and yarn: https://gist.github.com/mcollina/b294a6c39ee700d24073c0e5a4e93104
If you search for terms like "mastodon" you get a lot of results with no context to the search. So there should be an option to search within titles only.