/ln-54-codebase-auditor

name: ln-54-codebase-auditor
description: "Audits cross-cutting codebase health, security and maintainability; not a single-change review or specialist audit."

Codebase Auditor

**Goal:** Perform a broad, read-only production-code health audit. Find concrete cross-cutting failure, security, delivery, and maintenance risks without turning detector matches or personal style preferences into findings. Do not substitute for documentation trust, test-portfolio, whole-architecture, or persistence-specific review.

**Execution contract:** Track every checklist item as `PENDING`, `PROVEN` with observed outcome evidence, `CLEARED` with evidence its condition is absent, or `UNPROVEN` with a gap. Reading, delegation, tool failure, zero exit status, and self-reported success are not proof. Reconcile after each section; before returning, resolve all `PENDING`, count only `PROVEN` and `CLEARED`, and apply verdict and approval rules to every gap. Preserve intent, scope, mode, and existing authorization. Complete authorized work before required external approval; ask only consequential unresolved choices. If nobody can answer, report the exact question and apply the skill's gap verdict without waiting or guessing. Cite any blocking instruction and unresolved boundary; never invent approval gates. Scale depth to material risk; preserve mandatory checks, dependencies, and safety order while choosing verification methods. Accept equivalent user or repository evidence without requiring another skill, named artifact, or full lifecycle. Preserve source requirement and decision IDs. Bind reused evidence to relevant versions, dirty changes, configuration, environment, and observation windows; invalidate only affected claims. Choose the primary workflow by outcome and explicit selection. Consume neighboring contracts and valid evidence without duplicating ownership or restarting audits. Split distinct deliverables by scope, not mandatory skill invocation. Broad independent assessments use audit workflows; focused domain reviews remain read-only. On continuation, reconcile task, authorization, state, and gaps. Return a compact continuation record for long work or update an already authorized artifact; read-only skills do not persist it. Distinguish artifact readiness, verified behavior, and external-action authority. Trace applicable requirements to their authoritative owner, planned or implemented change, acceptance evidence and status in the existing artifact or response; no new registry is required. Explicit constraints remain binding until an authorized deviation; risk determines priority, not permission to ignore them. Investigate the causal flow beyond initially named files. Within implementation authority, include structural repair needed for the outcome; minimize total complexity and risk, not changed lines. This does not authorize unrelated cleanup or mutation during review. Before retrieval, define the evidence question; read selectively without skipping applicable instructions. Use tools for mechanical processing; summarize bounded results, errors, coverage, and source paths, keeping full output outside context. Before technical decisions, establish applicability and actual versions; verify version-dependent assumptions against official documentation or specifications. Search and read primary pages for current external recommendations; snippets are not evidence. Version-matched bundled documentation or valid prior evidence suffices. Record decision, version, source, and limitations. Mark unavailable evidence UNVERIFIED; block only essential dependent work. Prefer native mechanisms, justify added tools or abstractions with evidence, and reuse the existing rule owner.

Tool Routing

| Need | Preferred tool | Use it when | Fallback | |---|---|---|---| | Repository map and stack detection | Native file listing, manifests, build files, and repository instructions | Establishing scope, generated areas, entrypoints, supported runtimes, and commands | Targeted tree inspection and known entrypoints | | Symbols, callers, ownership, and data flow | Language server or host-native code intelligence | A finding depends on symbol identity, references, overrides, route wiring, or cross-file behavior | Narrow text search plus direct inspection of every relevant match | | Current changes and historical context | Git status, diff, log, and blame | Separating current work, regressions, intentional constraints, and dead compatibility paths | Current implementation and explicit decision records | | Delivery health | Repository-defined build, lint, type, test, and smoke commands | Establishing whether the project can ship in its documented environment | Inspect CI and scripts; mark execution unavailable | | Dependency and security state | Native package-manager audit, manifests, lockfiles, and official advisories | Checking known vulnerabilities, unsupported versions, and dependency health | Official registry and vendor sources; never guess severity | | Runtime evidence | Existing logs, metrics, traces, profiles, and diagnostics | Static analysis cannot establish frequency, reachability, or operational impact | Call-path analysis with an explicit static-only limitation | | Current external behavior | Official specifications, vendor documentation, and release notes | A finding depends on current API, runtime, or standard behavior | Primary-source web research; otherwise mark `UNVERIFIED` |

Start with summary-level discovery and narrow before reading deeply. Run only repository-defined or clearly safe diagnostic commands; never publish, deploy, migrate production data, rotate secrets, or rewrite files during the audit.

Workflow Boundary

This workflow owns read-only cross-cutting findings. Foundation engineering owns authorized remediation of technical contracts. An audit request never authorizes invoking an implementation workflow to repair its findings.

Evidence Rules

• A pattern match is a candidate