Understanding npm package upgrades

I maintain a small task management app called Attainment that I used to teach myself more about front-end javascript development. It uses the Vue.js framework and I use npm to manage my upstream dependencies. I don’t get much consistent time to hack on it, so it’s usually several months in between development cycles. When I come back to the project, I’ve invariably found myself asking “what’s changed and what should I update?” when it comes to my dependencies. »