Workflow Codebase Audit

Workflow: Codebase Audit (cold-start multi-domain sweep)

Announce at start: "Activating workflow-codebase-audit to run the cold-start audit sweep."

When to invoke

• Take-home or technical assessment requiring a broad codebase review.
• Post-acquisition or due-diligence review of an unfamiliar repo.
• Inherited-service onboarding: "I just took ownership of this, what's the state of it?"
• Pre-refactor tech-debt sweep across a monorepo or service.

When NOT to invoke

• Single-domain security audit → use security-auditor directly (depth-first, OWASP-focused).
• Known bug with a repro → use /swe-workbench:debug (root-cause + fix lifecycle).
• PR diff review → use /swe-workbench:review or workflow-pr-review.
• Code already familiar; you know what to look for → run targeted tools directly.

Composition

This skill orchestrates; domain analysis is delegated to:

• swe-workbench:auditor subagent — broad multi-domain sweep (security, perf, reliability, tooling, testing).
• swe-workbench:security-auditor subagent — depth-first CVE + threat review; deep mode only, top-N security findings.
• swe-workbench:debugger subagent — root-cause + fix path on top-N reliability findings by rank; deep mode only.
• swe-workbench:ticket-context skill — prepended when a ticket ref is present in $ARGUMENTS.

Phases

Phase 1 — Clarify (only when --scope is absent)

Skip this phase entirely if --scope appears explicitly in $ARGUMENTS — including --scope=all, which means "all domains, no clarification needed."

Only when --scope is completely absent: ask the user which domains matter most (security, perf, reliability, tooling, testing), then proceed. If superpowers:brainstorming is available, invoke it to surface assumptions about the codebase before sweeping. If unavailable, ask directly: "Which audit domains do you want covered? (security, perf, reliability, tooling, testing — or all?)"

Phase 2 — Dispatch auditor

Build a plain-prose prompt from the parsed flags:

> "Time-box: `. Scope: . Depth: . Top-N: `. > Run a cold-start multi-domain audit of this codebase. Return findings in the full 11-field schema."

Pass this to the auditor subagent. The agent is read-only and self-paces to the time-box.

Phase 3 — Schema validation

Every finding returned by the auditor must include all three reasoning fields:

• root_cause — the underlying code-level cause, not just the symptom.
• reasoning_chain — the step-by-step path from evidence to conclusion.
• counter_evidence_considered — what would falsify this finding, and why it doesn't.

Drop any finding missing one or more of these three fields. Surface the count: "Dropped N/M findings for incomplete reasoning schema."

Phase 4 — Fan-out (depth=deep only)

Skip this phase entirely for --depth=quick and --depth=standard.

For --depth=deep:

1. Take the top-N security findings → invoke security-auditor subagent for depth-first CVE + threat analysis.
2. Take the top-N reliability findings by rank → invoke debugger subagent for root-cause + fix recommendation.

Wait for both agents to complete before proceeding to Phase 5.

Phase 5 — Rank and render

Ranking formula: severity_score × confidence × (1 / effort_score) where:

• severity_score: Critical=4, High=3, Medium=2, Low=1
• confidence: 0.0–1.0 as declared by auditor
• effort_score: low=1, medium=2, high=3

Output structure:

1. Ranked summary table — one row per finding, columns: Rank | Severity | Domain | Title | File:Line | Confidence
2. Per-finding `` block — full 11-field schema (see rendering template below)
3. Tally — Critical: N | High: N | Medium: N | Low: N | Dropped: N
4. Fan-out addendum (deep mode only) — security-auditor and debugger findings appended after the main table.

Rendering template

## Codebase Audit —  — 

**Tally:** Critical: N | High: N | Medium: N | Low: N | Dropped: N (missing reasoning schema)

| Rank | Severity | Domain | Title | File:Line | Confidence |
|------|----------|--------|-------|-----------|------------|
| 1    | Critical | security | Unescaped user input in SQL query | src/db.ts:88 | 0.95 |
| 2    | High     | reliability | No timeout on outbound HTTP calls | src/client.ts:42 | 0.87 |

Finding #1 — Critical / security: Unescaped user input in SQL query

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| **title** | Unescaped user input in SQL query |
| **severity** | Critical |
| **domain** | security |
| **file_line** | src/db.ts:88 |
| **symptom** | Attacker-controlled string interpolated directly into SQL |
| **root_cause** | `queryBuilder` skips parameterized binding when `rawMode=true` |
| **reasoning_chain** | 1. `req.query.id` flows into `queryBuilder(rawMode=true)` at line 42. 2. Raw mode bypasses `pg.escape()`. 3. Query executed at line 88 with unsanitized string. |
| **counter_evidence_considered** | Checked whether middleware pre-sanitizes input — it does not; `validateInput()` at line 20 only checks type, not content. |
| **confidence** | 0.95 |
| **effort** | low |
| **suggested_fix** | Replace `queryBuilder(rawMode=true)` with parameterized `queryBuilder({ params: [id] })` |

Absolute rules

• No edits. This workflow is read-only. Never invoke Edit, Write, or any shell command that writes to disk.
• Soft time-box. The auditor self-paces. There is no hard kill; findings reported at natural completion.
• Schema enforcement is non-negotiable. Drop findings that lack root_cause, reasoning_chain, or counter_evidence_considered. Never invent or infer these fields from partial evidence.
• Never invent findings. If evidence is absent, omit the finding. Silence is correct; false positives erode trust faster than missed findings.
• Fan-out only on deep. Quick and standard modes stay single-pass. Do not invoke security-auditor or debugger unless --depth=deep.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: lugassawan
• Source: lugassawan/swe-workbench
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.