You don't have to use operators in package.json, so this pain relief is available to you right now. Just let the version remain precisely as "npm install" wrote it, with no tildes or wildcards or anything.

Admittedly, the "update all packages to latest compatible version" flag described above sounds very nice. There is approximately zero chance the npm developers would ever accept such a PR, but there would be nothing wrong with a utility that accomplished the same thing.

That may work for my dependencies but not the dependencies of my dependencies. In other words, for that to work it isn't enough for me to change - every npm library maintainer must change.

Yep, this is the problem with "features", when they exist somebody else will use them and you'll eventually have a dependency that does.

Maybe deno will implement something like vgo. (If you don't yet know about deno: https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA )