Npm as local dependency

I'm not sure that using npm as a local dependency is a good practise.
In my case I am not able to use sprity-cli in my project because it installs npm < 3 and another module check the version of npm.
Maybe using peerDependency rather than a srict dependency ? https://docs.npmjs.com/files/package.json#peerdependencies

What do you think ?
