/audit-cycle

name: auditor:audit-cycle
description: Flow A — fully automated audit-firm lifecycle. Runs scope → context → tool-assisted first pass → domain-partitioned manual review → independent reconciliation → client report end-to-end, and delivers a professional audit report (MD + optional PDF). Audit-shaped automation, not a substitute for a human firm audit.
argument-hint: "[path] [--scope full|program|backend|frontend]"
allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Bash, Task

auditor-skill — Flow A: Automated Audit Cycle → Client Report

**Arguments:** $ARGUMENTS

Run the full audit-firm lifecycle autonomously, from intake to a deliverable report. Read `OUTPUT-RULES.md` first (mandatory format, severity 1-10, the **Rule 5b** validation gate) and `references/audit-lifecycle/methodology.md` (the firm-spine → skill-mechanism mapping this flow follows). Do not pause for a human — where a firm would ask the client, use the `QUESTIONS.md` defaults and record the assumption in the report.

Lifecycle

1. **Scope / intake (Rule 0 + commit-pin).** Discover the repo, declare scope (`SKILL.md` → SCOPE-GATED LOADING), and honor `--scope`. Pin the audited commit (`git rev-parse HEAD`) so the report names exactly what was reviewed. If no human is present to answer intake, apply `QUESTIONS.md` defaults and list every assumed answer under "Scope & Assumptions". Persist the intake as `audit_<n>/intake.md` (the `/intake` artifact) so every later phase and the report read one source of truth.

2. **Context reconstruction (Phase 0.5).** Spawn `context-builder` (sonnet). It produces the instruction matrix, state model, and per-function worksheets in `audit_<n>/worksheets/context/`. No verdicts yet — understanding only. These worksheets are the shared substrate every later phase reuses (avoids re-reconstruction cost).

2b. **Threat model.** Spawn `threat-modeler` (opus) → `audit_<n>/threat-model.md`: asset inventory, an actor×capability table (what each actor must NOT be able to do), and the trust boundaries, built from the context worksheets + `intake.md`. This seeds report §4.4/§4.6/§4.7 and hands the reviewers concrete attacker goals to test — not verdicts.

3. **Tool-assisted first pass (tools up-front).** If `vendor/trailofbits/plugins` is present (`test -d vendor/trailofbits/plugins`), run ToB `static-analysis` (SAST) over the in-scope languages and fold the SARIF **as evidence that clears the mechanical surface and directs manual attention** — not as verdicts (`references/orchestration/boundary-map.md`). This follows Trail of Bits' precedent of running the toolset (Clippy pedantic, `cargo-audit`, `cargo-outdated`) at engagement start so linter/advisory noise is dispatched before the deep human read. If absent, run the `discovery/grep-commands.md` native scanners and note the tooling gap. Load in-scope `references/methodologies/*` per their protocol markers (`SKILL.md` reference table) so domain review has the right playbook.

4. **Domain-partitioned manual review (NOT N identical clones).** Partition the surface by domain and run reviewers **in parallel over disjoint surfaces** — naive N-way fan-out of the same prompt produces ~87% false positives, so each reviewer owns a distinct partition:

• `vuln-hunter` (opus) — in-scope checklists + phase-triggered known-vectors over the program / language surface.
• `economic-analyst` (opus) — checklist 06 + economic known-vectors + the loaded `references/methodologies/*` over the value-flow surface.

**Anti-false-positive gate at the leaf.** Each reviewer triages every candidate finding through **Rule 5b** + `references/false-positives.md` **before emitting it**. A finding that cannot complete the Rule 5b Reachability + Math/State-Bounds block (Attacker-Model for N≥7) is downgraded to `[PARTIAL]` / `[UNCONFIRMED]` — no bare high-severity claims cross the boundary.

4b. **Triage.** Run `/triage` over the candidate set before reconciliation: dedup by root-cause (when `tools/auditor-tools` is built, `audit-mem check` auto-suppresses prior-ruled false positives and flags regressions), re-apply the Rule 5b gate (downgrade to `[UNCONFIRMED]`/`[UNDETERMINED]` with a quantified barrier per `references/false-positives.md`), and split real findings (severity 1–10) from the **Notes & Nitpicks** list (Rule 1). Emit a suppression appendix — what was withheld and why.

5. **Independent reconciliation.** Spawn `peer-reviewer` (opus) on the **top-severity survivors**: every confirmed finding at **N≥8**, plus any **N≥7** the primary could not PoC. It re-derives each finding **from the code** (reusing `audit_<n>/worksheets/context/*`), not from the primary's write-up. Reconcile: a `DISPUTE` forces the finding back through Rule 5b or to `[UNCONFIRMED]`; a `DOWNGRADE` re-rates it; disagreement forces re-examination before anything ships.

6. **Synthesis.** Spawn `audit-reporter` (sonnet): deduplicate findings **by root-cause**, classify by severity (1-10), order by **severity / business importance**, and fill the **client-facing** audit report — `templates/audit-report.md` (maturity narrative + trust-model caveats + disclaimers, **no deploy guarantee**). The internal `templates/report-template.md` retains the numeric Repository Risk Score for the team's own gating; the client document never presents a risk score as a "safe to deploy" verdict (`references/audit-lifecycle/methodology.md` §1).

**Assumptions & Simplifications section (mandatory).** The report includes a named **Assumptions & Simplifications** section, built from `context-builder`'s per-function assumptions / external-risks (Phase 0.5 worksheets) plus every intake default applied in step 1 — what the review took as given (trusted admins, honest oracles, upgrade-authority custody, out-of-scope programs) and anything the analysis abstracted away. This mirrors Certora's "General Assumptions and Simplifications" section: a reader must know the envelope the findings hold within, so "no finding here" reads against t