Please do not open a public GitHub issue for security vulnerabilities.

To report a vulnerability, email the maintainers directly (contact details in the GitHub profile) or open a GitHub private security advisory.

Include:

• A description of the vulnerability and its potential impact
• Steps to reproduce (proof-of-concept if possible)
• The version you tested against

You will receive an acknowledgement within 72 hours and a status update within 7 days.

The API is currently a public API — there is no user authentication or authorization layer. All endpoints are accessible without credentials. This is a documented known limitation. For multi-tenant or internet-facing deployments, place a reverse proxy with authentication (e.g., nginx + OAuth2 proxy, Cloudflare Access) in front of the API.

• API keys are loaded exclusively from environment variables (.env file or OS environment)
• Keys are never logged — only their presence (bool) is recorded at startup
• At startup, all configured providers run a health_check() that validates credentials using a lightweight, non-quota-consuming API call (e.g., list models)
• Error messages classify the failure type (e.g., invalid_credential_type, missing_credential) without exposing key values

A sliding-window per-IP rate limiter is implemented in backend/security_middleware.py:

• Default: 60 requests per minute per IP
• Configurable via RATE_LIMIT_PER_MINUTE environment variable
• Returns 429 Too Many Requests when exceeded
• Exempt paths: /health, /metrics, /api/v1/health, /api/v1/metrics

• All API request bodies are validated by Pydantic models before reaching business logic
• GitHub repository URLs are validated by parse_repo_url() to prevent path traversal
• File paths in graph and symbol operations are sanitized
• SQL queries use parameterized statements throughout

CORS is restricted to the configured FRONTEND_URL. allow_credentials=True is intentionally paired with a specific origin (not a wildcard) as required by the CORS specification and browser security policy.

In production, set FRONTEND_URL to your actual frontend domain.

The server binds to 0.0.0.0:8001 by default. In production:

• Place behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy, Cloudflare)
• Set ALLOWED_HOSTS to your production hostname(s)
• Set APP_ENV=production to enable fail-fast startup validation

Applied in this order to every request:

1. RequestIdMiddleware — injects a unique X-Request-ID for audit tracing
2. RateLimitMiddleware — per-IP sliding window
3. MetricsMiddleware — records request counts and durations (no PII)
4. GZipMiddleware — compresses responses > 1000 bytes
5. TrustedHostMiddleware — validates Host header against ALLOWED_HOSTS
6. CORSMiddleware — validates Origin against FRONTEND_URL

Analyzed repositories are cloned to CLONED_REPOS_PATH (defaults to ~/.repo_intelligence/cloned_repos). This path should be:

• Outside the project tree to prevent uvicorn's WatchFiles from triggering reload loops
• On a volume with sufficient space and appropriate permissions
• Not accessible over the network

• data/analysis_store.json — written atomically via tmp file + os.replace() to prevent corruption
• data/chroma_db/ — local ChromaDB persistence; no network exposure
• data/repo_understanding.db — SQLite database; no network exposure

• No user authentication: See above. Add a proxy layer for production.
• No request signing: Internal service-to-service calls are not authenticated.
• CORS in development: In development mode, localhost:4321 is added as an additional allowed origin alongside FRONTEND_URL. This is intentional for local development.
• GitHub token scope: GITHUB_TOKEN is used for cloning and API calls. Use a fine-grained PAT with the minimum required scopes (contents:read, metadata:read).