production-audit

Production Audit

Assess whether an application is safe to ship by inspecting the release surface and naming production risks.

Contract

Inputs:

• Repository, branch, PR, release candidate, or deployed URL
• Optional launch-critical flows, test account, environment notes, or CI run

Outputs:

• Ship/block recommendation with score and evidence
• Blockers, high-value fixes, missing evidence, and next action
• Concrete file, command, CI, or URL references

Creates/Modifies:

• None in audit mode
• Follow-up fixes only when explicitly requested

External Side Effects:

• Read-only local commands and authorized HTTP/browser checks
• No source upload, destructive migration, production write, or scanner run by default

Confirmation Required:

• Before credentialed production actions, remote scanner use, deploys, migrations, data changes, or user-impacting tests

Delegates To:

• security-audit for application security findings
• deploy or deployment-patterns for release mechanics
• release-pr-gates for GitHub release promotion
• playwright-e2e-init or e2e-testing for missing launch-critical browser coverage

When to Use

• User asks "is this production ready?", "what breaks in prod?", "ready to ship?", "audit this release", or "what did we miss?"
• A launch, demo, customer rollout, or investor walkthrough is close.
• CI is green but production risk still needs review.
• A risky PR merged or a dependency upgrade landed.
• A deployed staging or preview URL needs a readiness pass.

Not a compliance, legal, financial, medical, or security certification — engineering release triage only.

Evidence Order

Start with cheap local evidence:

git status --short --branch
git log --oneline --decorate -20
git diff --stat origin/main...HEAD

Then inspect the surfaces that actually exist:

• package scripts, build commands, CI workflows, and release scripts
• API routes, auth middleware, webhooks, workers, cron jobs, and queues
• migrations, seeds, backfills, rollback notes, and data access policies
• environment variable documentation and startup validation
• payment, email, storage, AI, and external-provider boundaries
• observability, logging, health checks, dashboards, and alert ownership
• E2E or smoke coverage for launch-critical user paths
• deployed URL checks when a URL is in scope

Do not call a release healthy just because CI is green.

Risk Lenses

Security and Auth

• Are sensitive routes protected server-side?
• Are authorization checks tenant-aware and applied near data access?
• Are secrets absent from client bundles, logs, examples, and committed files?
• Are uploads, CORS, CSRF, rate limits, and input validation appropriate?
• Do agent or AI surfaces isolate untrusted content from privileged tools?

Data Integrity

• Can migrations run forward safely?
• Is there a rollback, recovery, or backup path for high-impact changes?
• Are destructive backfills staged and idempotent?
• Are retries safe for writes, jobs, and webhooks?
• Do sandbox, staging, and production schemas match the code assumptions?

Payments and Webhooks

• Are webhook signatures verified before trusting payload fields?
• Are fulfillment handlers idempotent for duplicate delivery?
• Are out-of-order and replayed events handled?
• Are test and live credentials separated?
• Is customer-visible billing state recoverable after provider failure?

Operations

• Can the app start from a clean checkout with documented commands?
• Are required environment variables named and validated at startup?
• Is there a health check that proves dependencies are reachable?
• Are logs useful without leaking secrets or personal data?
• Is there a clear deploy, rollback, and incident-owner path?

User Experience

• Are launch-critical paths covered on desktop and mobile?
• Are loading, empty, error, and permission-denied states usable?
• Do forms handle invalid input, slow requests, and double submits?
• Is there a recovery or support path when a critical operation fails?

Scoring

Use scores to force prioritization:

Score	Verdict
0-49	Blocked: do not ship until blockers are fixed
50-69	Risky: internal beta or small rollout only
70-84	Launchable with caveats: ship if owners accept named risks
85-100	Strong: no obvious launch blockers from available evidence

Cap at 69 if any are true:

• auth or authorization is missing for sensitive data
• payment or fulfillment webhooks are not idempotent
• required migrations cannot run safely
• secrets are exposed in client bundles, logs, or committed files
• no rollback or recovery path exists for a high-impact release

Cap at 84 if CI is not green or the launch-critical path was not tested end to end.

Output Format

Lead with one sentence:

Production audit: 76/100, launchable with caveats, with webhook idempotency and rollback docs as the two risks to fix before public launch.

Then list:

• Blockers: must-fix items before deploy
• High-value fixes: next improvements by impact
• Evidence checked: files, commands, CI, URLs, or PRs inspected
• Evidence missing: what would change confidence
• Next action: one concrete fix or verification step

If no blockers are found, still state the evidence boundary.

Anti-Patterns

• Running unpinned remote scanners as the default audit path.
• Uploading private source, secrets, customer data, or topology externally without explicit approval.
• Giving a score without naming evidence.
• Treating staging smoke tests as proof that data migrations are safe.
• Ending with a generic summary instead of the next concrete release action.