They are completely separate concerns! Why would they necessarily be tightly coupled? Assuming use of an npm package registry (the default public one at npmjs.o

They are completely separate concerns! Why would they necessarily be tightly coupled? Assuming use of an npm package registry (the default public one at npmjs.org, or a private one like jfrog artifactory), there's nothing "silly" about using a pnpm client instead of npm (or yarn).