prefer-unknown-over-any

You should use unknown instead of any for TypeScript JSON parsing because unknown forces you to validate and narrow types before usage, preventing unsafe operations and runtime errors on untyped data.

To handle external API responses safely, type the incoming data as unknown and apply type guards and validations to narrow the type before accessing properties, preventing unexpected runtime errors.

The best way to process untyped user input is to assign it the unknown type, which enforces type checking and requires explicit validation before the value can be safely used in your application.

Yes, using unknown over any improves type safety for external data ingestion by forcing developers to perform type narrowing and validation, ensuring that untrusted data is structurally verified before execution.

To replace any with unknown, update your function signatures to return unknown for untrusted values, then implement type guards to narrow the data structure before it is accessed by the application.

You should avoid using unknown when you are certain of a value's type and structure, as applying it unnecessarily requires redundant type guards and narrowing that can complicate code without adding safety.