classify-findings

Classify a finding's severity

Severity decides what GATES. The pipeline release gate enforces 0 HIGH; MEDIUM/LOW are recorded but do not block; ADVISORY is informational and excluded from the tally. Assign deliberately — an inflated HIGH blocks a clean release; a buried HIGH ships a broken gate.

HIGH — a gate or module is SILENTLY broken or bypassable

Use for: security, fail-open, data-loss, path traversal, and anything that makes a safety gate not run / not block while appearing healthy.

• A guard that fails open (crashes/returns allow under set -e, or trusts a stub interpreter). [D1]
• An allow-zone/scope check on a raw, un-normalized path → ../backslash escape. [D2]
• A hook whose command is missing or not executable → it silently never runs. [D6]
• A manifest that won't parse, or a marketplace source that doesn't resolve → plugin won't load. [D7]
• A vendored lib drifted from canonical → a plugin runs stale (e.g. un-fixed) shared logic. [D8]
• (Sub-agents) auth bypass, missing input validation on a trust boundary, a destructive op without a guard, a broken invariant the explorer memory says must hold.

MEDIUM — a real defect that does NOT silently break a gate

Use for: portability, false-block (a gate that wrongly blocks), and contract drift.

• A matcher/guard that misses a tool variant (e.g. NotebookEdit) → a coverage gap. [D3]
• A hook that can block forever on missing stdin (cat with no [ -t 0 ]). [D4]
• SessionStart guidance sent only to stderr → never reaches the model. [D5]
• A hook entry with no timeout → a hang can stall the turn. [D6b]
• A false-fail on a python-less/stub host; a deterministic check that silently no-ops.

LOW — hygiene / style

Use for: line endings, exec bit, lint.

• A .sh that ships CRLF, or a non-hook .sh not tracked 100755. [D9]
• ShellCheck error-level findings (warnings/info are not surfaced).

ADVISORY — informational only (NEVER gates; EXCLUDED from the tally)

Use for the "fuzzy" findings whose static signal is too weak to gate on without false-blocking, and for purely stylistic notes:

• README/doc drift vs actual behavior (F5).
• An agent declaring BOTH tools: and disallowedTools: (redundant, F12).
• Stale .claude/explorer/index.json paths that no longer resolve (F13).
• "ShellCheck skipped" when ShellCheck isn't installed.

Tie-breakers

• "Could this let an unsafe edit/exec through, or make a gate silently not run?" → HIGH.
• "Is it a real defect but the gate still fundamentally works / only degrades?" → MEDIUM.
• "Is it cosmetic or hygiene?" → LOW.
• "Is the signal fuzzy / would gating on it risk false-blocking a clean tree?" → ADVISORY.
• When uncertain between HIGH and MEDIUM, prefer MEDIUM unless you can name the concrete bypass/fail-open — the gate must stay trustworthy, not trigger-happy.