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Security & Governance

Code Scalpel is built around a core principle: you can't govern AI agents with suggestions. Security and governance are enforced at the infrastructure level, not the policy level.

Architecture: Local-First, Zero Exfiltration

Your code never leaves your machine. Code Scalpel runs as a local MCP server — all AST parsing, dependency tracking, and security analysis happens on your hardware. No telemetry. No cloud calls. No data exfiltration.

What We Detect

Code Scalpel's taint-based security analysis tracks user-controlled values from source to sink:

Category Examples
SQL Injection sqlite3.execute(f"SELECT * FROM {user_input}")
XSS innerHTML = user_value
Command Injection os.system(cmd), subprocess.call(user_cmd)
Path Traversal open(f"/data/{user_path}")
Insecure Deserialization pickle.loads(data)
Hardcoded Secrets API keys, passwords in source code

What We Don't Detect

We document limitations honestly rather than overstating capabilities:

  • Runtime behavior — static analysis only; dynamically constructed payloads may be missed
  • Business logic flaws — we detect code patterns, not semantic intent
  • Encrypted or obfuscated code — AST parsing requires readable source

Policy Integrity

Enterprise tier includes cryptographic verification of policy manifests via HMAC-SHA256. Policies cannot be tampered with silently — the verify_policy_integrity tool checks integrity before every policy evaluation.

Fail-Closed Behavior

When the policy engine encounters an error or ambiguity, it defaults to deny. Agents cannot bypass governance by triggering exceptions.

Vulnerability Reporting

Found a security issue in Code Scalpel itself? Please report it responsibly:

We aim to acknowledge reports within 48 hours and patch critical issues within 7 days.

Full Security & Governance Reference

For the complete Governance & Audit documentation, including compliance evidence generation and enterprise deployment security, see the Security Analysis Guide and the Enterprise Deployment Guide.