Open_Ultra_SAST/.kiro/steering/roadmap.md

# Roadmap

## Roadmap to detection with the decision engine on kube-ax (2026-10-04)

This section supersedes the ordering below it. The older sections stay as history.

### Destination

On every push, from a hook or CI, OpenUltraSAST answers for the changed code. The answer is advisory for every
family, and BLOCK only for families whose precision has been proven on repositories the system never saw. The work
is split by what each place is good at:

- **kube-ax cluster** (operator k3s, Agent Substrate v0.3.0, AX v0.3.1, 2 nodes): the Joern engine, as AX Tasks.
  No API keys and no store credentials in the cluster; tasks read and write through short-lived presigned links.
- **The VM or CI runner**: candidate selection, the decision engine's model calls (DeepSeek), the memory store,
  and the fallback engine lane (2.5 GB heap) for pins that do not fit the cluster's 1.7 GB heap.
- **kind** stays the local development profile, with the same code and manifests.

### The question everything answers

Does the safety net work on repositories it has never seen? That is the purpose of the A/B experiments, and every
phase below is judged by it. On an unseen repository almost every push is an ordinary change, so two numbers decide
whether the safety net is useful, measured on the hook's advisory output exactly as a user would see it:

1. **Catch rate:** on real vulnerability-introducing changes in unseen repositories, how often it flags the change.
2. **False-alarm rate:** on ordinary changes in the same unseen repositories, how often it flags anything.

Within-pair AUC on known fix pairs answers neither. It stays a development signal, not the goal.

### Where we are (2026-10-04)

| Area | State | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Generalisation measured so far | The classifier ranks above chance on repository-held-out folds (within-pair AUC about 0.76) but cannot reach the block bar; the engine-based scan failed fresh populations (v1 1/11, v2 0/17); push-level catch and false-alarm rates on unseen repositories have never been measured | exp-003/004/005, `results-v1.json`, `results-v2.json` |
| Pre-push hook | Operational and advisory on any repository | `2026-10-02-pre-push-operational-1/record.json` |
| Labelled data | 710 complete real fix pairs | `2026-10-04-decision-engine-harvest-3/record.json` |
| Engine | Almost blind to fixes (paths differ between sides in 2 of 105 both-asked pairs) | `2026-10-04-joern-slice-leak-audit/record.json` |
| Infrastructure | Engine runs on kube-ax as AX Tasks with a VM fallback; kind for development | memory `kube-ax-cluster` |

Correction recorded 2026-10-04: the previous two days went mostly into infrastructure and engine internals that did
not move a generalisation number. From here, infrastructure and engine work is done only when it removes a
bottleneck for the measurements below.

### Where we are (2026-10-11)

The G0 measurement is **done**: the unseen pool is **frozen**, the pipeline is hardened and **bucket-first**,
and the slice-1 baseline (record 07) ran on the **docker lane** — the sanctioned interim while the kube `ax`
lane is restored. G0 is exited; the kube `ax` lane is now a **G1** concern (the engine arm at scale), not a
baseline blocker. (Correction 2026-10-12: an earlier revision of this section said the baseline was "the one
remaining step, to run on kube" — that was stale; record 07 was completed on docker right after, see below.)

| Area | State | Evidence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Unseen pool (G0.1) | **Frozen.** `pool-p1.toml` = 100 repos (slice 1); `freeze-p1.json` guard=0, dropped=0; deterministic (manifest `6bd2fa5d`). License 49 permissive / 51 private; methods 81 introducing / 19 last_touch. | `benchmarks/unseen/pool-p1.toml`; archived `ousast-corpus/unseen/20260601/pool/` |
| Labels | 100 machine-derived (SZZ), **unchecked**. Record 07 is a **machine-label baseline** (caveat stated); a human label pass is a later refinement, before any published claim. | `freeze-p1.json` label_check_counts |
| Harvest | Rebuilt to converge. Pure GitHub-API harvesting is a dead end for this benchmark (it needs the SZZ introducing commit + 12 stratified history negatives, not one commit). The fix: a full-objects clone (drop `--filter=blob:none`, which caused ~600 per-blob lazy fetches) + bucket-first durability + a get_repo cache that paid the 4,499-name used-set canonicalization once. Yield ~2.2%; **GitHub-rate-limit bound, not CPU**. | 95bed70, 857263d, 21aebe8, 7b711a6 |
| Persistence | **Bucket-first, not local disk.** `ousast-corpus` is the source of truth: enumeration, resolution, get_repo, and accept/reject decisions all stream to and resume from it. The host disk (~9-13 GB free) is the scarce resource; RustFS/S3 has the room, so run artifacts and **replay outputs go to RustFS too**, not `~/ousast-results` on local disk. | `storage-streaming.md`, `bank.py` |
| Replay image | Provenance pinned. CI `engine-image.yml` builds `ousast-replay-task` (harness with `/app/benchmarks/unseen/replay_entry.py`) + `ousast-engine-task` (Joern hook), publicly pullable by digest. The old `ousast-runner:dev` (248 MB ax-runner, no `/app/benchmarks`, no Joern) is the **wrong** image for replay. | CI run 38116281676 |
| Baseline (G0.2) | **DONE — record 07 (`e901640`), docker lane.** 1300/1300 changes; catch 3/92 = **3.3%** (Wilson95 1.1–9.2%), false-alarm **3.1%** (cluster95 1.6–5.4%), instrument_failure 54 (4.2% < 5% guard). `engine_covered=0` and no model calls → this is a **regex/quick-rule floor** (the engine never ran under the ~200s pre-push wall; the LLM tier was disabled). Baseline row in `usage-p1.jsonl` (freeze_digest `3371c67d`) = **G0 exit**. Ran on docker (not kube `ax`) per the sanctioned interim. | `benchmarks/measurements/2026-10-11-unseen-07-slice1-baseline/` |

Lesson, recorded so it is not re-paid: sourcing and engine-image work cost real time. The durable takeaway now lives
in the pipeline and these docs — bucket-first persistence, pinned image provenance, a measured yield — so the next
pool or arm is cheap, not a rediscovery.

### Readiness plan (G0 exited; next is G1)

**G0 exit = record 07 is DONE** (docker lane, regex/quick-rule floor; see the Baseline row above). Steps 1–4
below are complete. The kube `ax` lane was NOT needed for the baseline and is now a **G1** target.

1. ~~Kube replay lane~~ — **not needed for G0**; the baseline ran on the docker lane (the sanctioned interim).
   The `ax` lane moves to G1 (see below).
2. ~~Unblock the replay~~ — done; replay ran over the frozen slice.
3. ~~Run slice-1 baseline~~ — done: `--lane docker --arm default`, 1,300 changes, no model cost, outputs to RustFS.
4. ~~Adjudicate (7.3) → record 07 (7.4)~~ — done = **G0 exit** (`usage-p1.jsonl` freeze_digest `3371c67d`).
5. **Next — G1 arms on the frozen pool.** Re-score the arms that the regex floor cannot be (engine evidence,
   DeepSeek decision engine, combiner) to see what beats catch 3.3% at a fixed false-alarm budget. This is where
   the kube `ax` lane is needed, because the engine arm cannot run under the ~200s pre-push wall on a single host.

### Restoring the kube `ax` lane (for G1, operator-owned)

The AX executor is **built and smoke-tested** (`benchmarks/ax/batch.py`, `engine_trace.py` `ax`/`mixed-ax`
lanes, OOM→docker fallback; an engine smoke test dispatched to the 2-worker cluster end-to-end on 2026-10-04).
What remains before the G1 engine-arm replay:

- **Use the working `ax` binary: `~/go/bin/ax`** — NOT `~/.local/ax-v0.3.1/ax`, which hits the AX-lane blocker
  (recorded in the unseen spec `tasks.md`, 2026-10-11). The coordinator commands in the READMEs are being
  corrected to this binary.
- **Store endpoint:** `benchmarks/ax/batch.py` expects a public-HTTPS DNS, presign-capable S3 endpoint reachable
  from the cluster; the cluster carries no model/store credentials (it reads/writes via short-lived presigned
  links). This and the cluster's store access are operator/AX-owned.
- **Run the open spec tasks** that gate G1: **4.4** (engine smoke on kube-ax → record 04) and **5.4** (replay
  proof on kind, then kube-ax → record 05), both marked `(coordinator, network)`. Then the full engine-arm
  replay (`--lane ax`).

### Phases

**G0. The unseen-repository pool and the push-level metric** (new spec `unseen-repo-evaluation`)

1. A frozen pool of repositories never used for training, tuning, mining or harvesting, and not in any population.
   Two kinds of change per repository: real vulnerability-introducing commits (the parent of a fix, post-cutoff where
   possible) and ordinary commits from the same history.
2. The metric: replay each change through `ousast pre-push` (and the decision engine where an arm uses it) and
   record catch rate and false-alarm rate, with confidence intervals, per family and overall.
3. Rotation: the pool is spent per decision, like the populations; a new slice is drawn for the next one.

Exit: the pool is frozen and the current production hook has a measured baseline on it.

**G1. Re-score the arms we have on the pool**

Current hook (quick rules + engine), decision-engine advisory (current programs), combiner, engine evidence. Each is
an arm with a registered decision rule, scored by catch rate at a fixed false-alarm budget.

Exit: one measured table of arms on unseen code; keep only what generalises.

**G2. Improve what moves the unseen-repo numbers**

Candidates, each admitted only if it improves the pool metric on a fresh slice: fix mechanisms in the engine
(approved plan, now one arm, not the spine), engine coverage and TypeScript, decision-engine prompt and retrieval
changes, more labelled pairs from more distinct repositories.

Active G2 workstreams (2026-10-11; progress tracked in `.kiro/specs/engine-change-scoped-analysis/brief.md`):

**#1 priority after record 07: get real (semantic) detection under the pre-push budget.** The record-07 baseline
is **regex only** — verified: the push arms hardcode `model="disabled"`, `max_model_calls=0`, and the engine never
ran (`engine_covered=0`); measured `catch≈2.5%`. Pattern rules alone will never be enough (else `grep` would do).
The two tiers that carry detection both sat out: the **engine** (Joern dataflow) and the **LLM adjudication**
(disabled in the push path). The workstream is an **efficiency barrier analysis** — a per-tier budget ledger
against a realistic pre-push window (≤120 s target, 300 s hard):
  - **Engine: E1/E2 DONE (2026-10-12, clean host) — see brief "E1/E2 RESULTS".** CORRECTION: the engine's
    `query=0` wall was **host contention** (the baseline replay), not an intrinsic floor. On a clean host the
    shipped engine **runs dataflow** (query 0→35 s, selected 0→**356 regions**). The evidence/taint batch (~225 s)
    is **invariant to session and preload**; graph-load is cheap (~35 s incl `importCpg`). The real barrier is
    `taint.sc`'s ~160 s per-batch flow work, so `build(~30)+evidence(~225)≈255 s` of 300 s defers 1009/1365
    regions. Lever = **change-scope the family/file set** the taint batch walks (NOT session/preload). E3 analysis
    per-pair cost; E4 build vs repo size remain.
  - **ENGINE-ON PILOT DONE (2026-10-12, clean host, 5 public repos) — see brief "ENGINE-ON PILOT RESULTS".**
    **regex 1/5, engine 0/5.** The engine added NO catches over the regex floor. The **budget hypothesis is
    REFUTED**: 3/5 repos finished their queue (deferred=0) and still emitted no finding — so change-scoping is NOT
    the path to catch. The engine ranked the vuln region in all 5 and found the right sink on 2 (socketio deser,
    launch-editor, score 2.0), but **withholds any finding it cannot anchor 1:1 to changed lines**: all 5 hit
    `ambiguous_line_correspondence` → `witness_unresolved` → `coverage_status=incomplete`, suppressing even the
    scored sinks. Confirmed NOT a shallow-clone artifact. **Release read: the net is NOT releasable on detection.**
  - **CORRECTED after inspecting `head.findings`:** the engine produced **ZERO vuln-family findings** (path/
    injection/deser) on all 5 — only config_secrets. The tier1/score2.0 "sink" was the RANKER's static candidate,
    not a taint finding. `ambiguous_line_correspondence` is a downstream red herring (nothing to anchor), so the
    region-level witness fix (old "Option A") was **refuted before implementation**. The **LLM tier was disabled**
    (model_calls=0). **ROOT CAUSE:** pilot repos are LIBRARIES whose untrusted input is public-API parameters;
    Python taint sources are web/CLI only, and the param-as-source mode fires only for entry points (vuln regions
    are `entry:false`) — widening it statically would reintroduce the WordPress/PMPro false-SQL-injection flood.
    **Workstream = maintainer's "#2 guided by #1":** the LLM adjudicates which library parameter is a trust boundary
    (static rules can't without FPs), the taint engine then traces that source→sink as proof, and repeated source
    shapes get promoted to guarded static facts. First increment (PENDING BUDGET): wire the disabled LLM tier on the
    5 pilot regions in LLM-guided-source mode; measure source naming, traced finding, catch lift vs regex 1/5, and
    false-alarm on ordinary changes; stage 5–10 → ~10–20 → full on lift. #3 change-anchoring deprioritised until
    tiers yield findings.
  - **BANKS FIXED-SEARCH MVP DONE (2026-10-12) — "#2 guided by #1" closes on an unseen target.** See brief
    "BANKS FIXED-SEARCH MVP" + `benchmarks/measurements/2026-10-12-banks-fixed-search-mvp/`. On banks (the
    library that gave the engine zero), injecting the two annotations an LLM steer would supply (param-as-source
    + `write_text`/`read_text` sink) makes the engine resolve `prompt → path-join → write_text` where the
    shipped search resolved nothing. Proves the governing principle "no wrong targets, only wrong searching" and
    names the exact inputs the DSPy-optimised steer must learn. Filed instrument bug:
    `.kiro/specs/engine-change-scoped-analysis/bugs/taint-sc-single-query-signature-skew.md` (single-query taint
    path dead on an exec-signature skew; batch path unaffected).
  - LLM: L1 model latency and calls per push; L2 the recall LIFT of the LLM tier over regex+dataflow on the pool.
  - Deliverable: a barrier table (budget × tier combo → fits? measured recall/FP) → the minimal releasable config.

- **Change-scoped engine analysis — DEMOTED again by the pilot.** Branch `engine-change-scoped-evidence-pass`
  (unmerged). Fitting the budget does not produce catches (3/5 pilot repos finished the queue with zero findings),
  so this is not on the catch critical path. Keep only as a latency optimisation once detection works.
- **Line-correspondence (merged c39fbb8).** `ambiguous_line_correspondence` fires on 5/5 realistic diffs, but the
  pilot's corrected diagnosis shows it is NOT the detection blocker here — the static tiers produce no vuln-family
  findings to anchor in the first place. A region-level witness fallback only matters once #1/#2 yield findings.

**G3. Decide BLOCK per family** on the pool's false-alarm rate and the pooled precision bound (Req 6.4).

**G4. Detection on push for any repository** (`plane-on-kubernetes` P4 work: `ousast plane scan --base --head`,
engine pins on kube-ax, model calls on the VM or CI), sized by what G1-G3 kept.

**G5. Qualification and rollout:** adopt, commit `prediction-v3.json`, spend population v3 once, advisory rollout,
BLOCK only for families that passed.

### Cross-cutting rules

- No hand-tuning per miss. Every detection change is a registered experiment or an admission by held-out
  separation.
- Records carry counts, digests and pattern names, never repository names: the reserved-repository guard covers
  every population.
- Instrument first: a zero from an unread input is a failed run (AGENTS.md).
- Cluster stability: sandbox deaths are retried once, then sent to the VM lane; the operator owns workers, egress
  and Substrate.

### Spec map

| Spec | Role in this roadmap | State |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `unseen-repo-evaluation` (new) | G0, G1: the pool and the push-level metric | To specify |
| `learned-decision-engine` | G1-G3, G5; fix-mechanisms plan is one G2 arm | Implementation; experiments 3-5 recorded |
| `plane-on-kubernetes` | G4; the engine executors for kube-ax | Groups 1-2 done (kind); production path re-scoped to the operator's kube-ax (AX Tasks), groups 3-8 to re-plan |
| `pre-push-safety-net` | the hook replayed in G0-G1; M4-M5 in G5 | Operational increment 1 done; M4-M5 open |
| `ai-service-plane` | The plane the above runs on | Complete |

## Status, 2026-10-02

The milestone table below dates from 2026-09-14. Since then (`.kiro/specs/pre-push-safety-net/release-milestones.md`):
M1a and M1b are met, M2 is measured NO-GO, and M3 is next, with M4 population preparation in parallel; none of
M1-M5 is verified and rollout remains NO-GO. Populations v1 and v2 were evaluated and failed every M4 gate
(`benchmarks/independent/results-v1.json`, `results-v2.json`); v3 (PHP) is frozen for the one-time final check.

Work since then moved to: the ax plane as the only agentic executor (`ai-service-plane`, HarnessX retired
2026-09-30 by `harnessx-removal`), and the learned decision engine (`learned-decision-engine`, task 6 in
progress, not adopted). See `overview.md` for the current-state summary.

## Release path as accepted 2026-09-14

Build an actionable pre-push security safety net for AI-accelerated development.
The maintainer accepted the following order: **prove one useful detection, make it
fast, prove cross-language transfer, qualify independently, then enable narrow advisory
rollout**. The executable outcome contract lives in the existing
[pre-push-safety-net release milestone spec](../specs/pre-push-safety-net/release-milestones.md).

**We are at M1b. M1a is met; no other release milestone is verified yet.** The published
`v1.2.0-alpha.1` and 28/29 completed implementation tasks describe delivered machinery,
not a demonstrated useful safety net. Task 8.3 and rollout remain NO-GO.

| Order | Milestone | Observable exit | Current state |
|---|---|---|---|
| M1a | Show the NodeGoat detection with every admission veto recorded, not applied | Raw finding with witness on the vulnerable revision; analyzed fixed twin and unchanged control quiet; per-finding veto list. One-week time box | MET 2026-09-16 |
| M1b | Repair only the vetoes M1a showed to matter | Supported evaluation finding through production rules, exact change/base evidence and repair direction; fixed twin and unchanged control stay quiet | IN PROGRESS: comparison half verified on all three revisions; the consequence and repair rendering (10.10) remains |
| M2 | Make that same analysis fast | Equivalent evidence; representative warm changed-code p95 <=30s, cancellation/report <=2s, >=95% supported completion | Pending M1 |
| M3 | Prove the shared design transfers | PMPro/PHP and VAmPI/Python vulnerable/fixed evidence; unchanged core rules; Node replay after any PMPro core change | Pending M2 |
| M4 | Qualify on independent cases | Reviewed untouched vulnerable/fixed/benign populations pass joint quality, coverage and latency gates per capability | Pending M3 |
| M5 | Enable a narrow advisory rollout | Exact passing eligibility and packaged acceptance; only qualified capabilities enabled | Pending M4 |

### Immediate next action

Finish M1b by rendering the experimental evaluation finding with its consequence and repair
direction (10.10), through an explicitly unreviewed declaration and with eligibility still
disabled. The comparison half is verified: the production rules classify the vulnerable, fixed
and unchanged NodeGoat revisions correctly, and admission rejects the vulnerable one on the
eligibility gate alone. What is missing is the explanation, which no declaration currently
supports, and inventing it is exactly what admission exists to prevent. Then M2 runtime.
Do not start another broad speed campaign before this outcome exists. See the
[M1a evidence](../specs/pre-push-safety-net/m1a-recorded-vetoes.md) and the
[owner diagnosis](../specs/contributor-scan/release-remediation-research.md).

### Approach and boundaries

The existing ranker owns scope. Vendor code stays out of targets and graphs. Framework
facts and frontends supply evidence to a language-agnostic core. Unknown dependencies
remain explicit; removing global completeness vetoes requires question-owned evidence,
not dropped safety checks. Advisory and blocking share the same actionability bar.

Graph persistence now works: identical-tip replays take 18.5–18.9s. All 18 other measured
transactions still time out and 0/24 target checks complete. A local Joern session census
probe is promising, but full-query equivalence and hook performance are unverified.
These findings inform M2; they do not complete M1. No second IR/engine, new heuristic
scope selector, differential graph mutation or unrelated backlog is part of this path.

## Existing Spec Updates

- [ ] pre-push-safety-net — Execute the accepted M1–M5 release milestone amendment.
  Owns immutable replay, comparison, admission, evaluation and reporting. Preserve the
  existing completed tasks; task 8.3 remains blocked until qualification passes.
- [ ] contributor-scan — Supply the required query/operation/context fixes for M1,
  followed by equivalent bounded session execution for M2 and shared transfer evidence.
  Frontend retention 2.18 and named census repair 2.19 are already verified.
- [ ] flow-aware-ranking — Preserve ranker-owned scope and normalized cross-language
  behavior. New ranking research is not a prerequisite for the first useful comparison.
- [ ] zero-with-a-reason — Adjacent diagnostics work; finishing its whole backlog is
  not required before M1.

## Specs (dependency order)

- [ ] pre-push-safety-net — Existing approved implementation, dependent on contributor-scan.
  Groups 1–7 and tasks 8.1, 8.2, 8.4 are verified; 26/27 executable tasks complete.
  Remaining release work follows [M1–M5](../specs/pre-push-safety-net/release-milestones.md).
  This amendment creates no duplicate implementation spec and resets no prior approvals.

### Progress reporting

Lead with the current milestone, the demonstrated developer outcome, the blocker and
the next action. Keep implementation counts separate from release readiness. Preserve
prior evidence and review limits in the [implementation records](../specs/pre-push-safety-net/status.md).
The earlier PHP-first and runtime-first narrative below is historical and does not
supersede this accepted sequence. Blocking deployment follows a later explicit decision.

## Historical roadmap narrative — September 9–11

The sections below preserve prior plans and measurements. Statements about the current bottleneck,
PHP coverage, rollout order or feature readiness are superseded by the current section above.

**Rewritten 2026-09-09.** The previous version (kept as `.kiro/archive/steering/roadmap-2026-09-04.md`, outside steering) described a pre-Joern world —
"adjudication is still Python-`ast` plus a tree-sitter CLI stub", "Joern-as-required deferred". Joern was
adopted, the model layer was built, wired and measured, and two repositories have been scanned. See
`overview.md` for what is true today; this is what happens next and in what order.

## The target: a first release for small projects

> "a first release that is ready for smaller projects like libpng or wordpress"

Those two are, today, exactly the cases that do not work — and they fail for **different** reasons, which is
what makes them a good pair of targets rather than one.

| target | why it fails now | what a release needs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **WordPress** (php) | `taint_specs(language="php")` returns **zero families**. Joern's `php2cpg` parses it; we say nothing. | Fact tables and entry-point mapping. The engine is right for this: PHP web bugs are the classic taint families, which is what the taint arbiter already decides well. |
| **libpng** (c) | `c/memory` models string functions; libpng overflows through *arithmetic*, and its library never calls a sink we model. | Either a second abstraction (size arithmetic — a constraint problem) or an honest, stated limit. |

So "ready for" has to mean two different things, and the release criteria say which applies where:

* For a project whose bug class a family **can** decide (WordPress, vibe-code): find the known vulnerability.
* For one it **cannot** (libpng today): run inside its envelope, report nothing false, and *state the limit*
  rather than returning a quiet clean bill of health.

The second is not a consolation. A tool that says "I do not model this class" is usable; one that silently
finds nothing is the thing that teaches developers to distrust SAST.

### Release criteria (v0.1)

1. Runs unattended on a pinned checkout of each target within a stated time and memory envelope.
2. **Zero known-false entailed findings** on every pinned checkout.
3. Finds the known vulnerability wherever a family can decide it in principle (Req 4.6).
4. States what each family cannot decide, in the report (Req 5.6).
5. The report is proportionate — no rule repeating itself past a stated count (Req 5.5).
6. Installs and runs without the user having Joern, a JVM, or a PHP interpreter (docker compose + wrapper).
7. A committed regression baseline per target, so the next change is measurable rather than argued about.

### What that reorders

PHP moves **up**: it is the shortest path from here to a target the maintainer named, and it is the case the
existing arbiter is best suited to. The C decision moves up with it, because criterion 4 needs `c/memory`
either earning its place or being scoped — and scoping it is cheap.

## The one test everything is ordered by

> "it must find the bugs, otherwise it's SAST noise. most devs know codeql / semgrep have dataflow
> capabilities but never use it"

So the ordering principle is: **make the output worth reading, then make it find more.** A better arbiter
behind an unreadable report changes nothing, and a second language before the report is fixed just doubles the
noise.

## Now — make a repository scan finish at all

The output work this section used to hold is done, and PHP went considerably further than it planned: three
CVEs on real WordPress plugins, entailed by the graph with no model in the loop, each dropping on its fixed
side. The detector is not the problem any more. **Finishing is.**

A 637-file plugin builds in 76 seconds and then the taint query does not complete. Everything below is
ordered by one question: what is the shortest path to a scan of a real plugin that reports its CVE?

1. **5.14 — stop asking questions that cannot have an answer.** 53% of taint requests are put to a family
   whose sinks do not appear in scope; every one of PMPro's 487 `deserialization` requests is asked of a
   repository that never calls `unserialize`. Arithmetic, not judgement, and it cannot lose a finding.
   4.6 hours → 2.2. Do this first because it makes every later measurement cheaper to run.
2. **5.12 — rank, because 84% of regions currently share one rank ordered alphabetically.** Two thirds of the
   budget is spent arbitrarily. Fifty well-chosen regions beat five hundred; combined with (1) that is the
   difference between hours and minutes. The ranker is an LLM job, and it is safe as one because ranking
   cannot manufacture a finding -- it decides what is looked at, never what is reported.
   **The loop is closed and that is a design requirement, not a caveat:** a region the ranker excludes is
   never arbitrated, so it never produces a label, so the ranker never learns it was wrong. An exploration
   slice and a small fully-labelled corpus are what make the signal unbiased.
3. **5.13 — the 6.63 s/request itself**, if (1) and (2) are not enough. `callDepth=3` over 7,061 methods is
   the term that makes a request cost seconds; the two-stage joins are NOT the cost (measured: 22%, and they
   found two of the three CVEs).

Only after a scan finishes is there any point tuning what it finds.

## Next — the families that cannot be asked

4. **5.9 — PHP obligation facts.** `dominance_specs(language="php")` is empty, so missing-capability checks
   are not asked on any WordPress scan. Not a miss; nothing was measured.
5. **5.6 — a sanitizer cleanses the family it cleanses.** The list is flat, so `esc_sql` reads as sufficient
   for XSS and `esc_html` as insufficient for SQL. Wrong in both directions, so no `output_encoding` verdict
   currently means anything.
6. **File the php2cpg defect upstream.** A `global` inside a closure yields a CPG Joern's own dataflow
   overlay rejects, bisected to four lines. Worked around here (0.2% of files, detected and excluded and
   reported), but it costs the WHOLE graph rather than the file, and other users will hit it.

## Then — close the deferred engine questions

8. **2.14 — control dependence.** Absent from both CPGs, so every guard question runs on CFG dominance. Find
   out whether Joern's CDG pass can be applied from the query script and what it costs. If it cannot, that is
   a real bound on what this engine can reason about and should be recorded as one.
9. **2.13 — a destination allocated to size.** Deliberately blocked on 6, so the rule can be measured for what
   it *silences* as well as what it clears.
10. **Group 3–4 — ship it.** Contributor output, the Docker image, the memory-family decision, retiring
    `evidence_level` now that the rung carries the meaning.

## Alongside — keep the codebase from growing into the problem

> "we should make sure our code base here doesn't explode. for example we have a custom IR."

`.kiro/specs/ir-consolidation/` (brief, unapproved) separates two questions with opposite answers:

* **The source IR is already carried, not about to be added.** `semantic/` is 3,218 lines — 16% of the
  codebase — holding a hand-written IR and flat taint engine measured at **2.2% entailment against the CPG's
  41.3%**, still running as a proposer. Vine and Ghidra P-Code are *binary* IRs and do not help here; the
  work is subtraction. A candidate ~1,000-line deletion with a number attached.
* **The missing abstraction is C arithmetic**, and there an existing IR is exactly right. GhidraPAL's
  three-valued-logic abstract interpreter over P-Code decides "can this index exceed this allocation", which
  is the class `c/memory` cannot see and every libpng overflow is. Vine is dormant since 2009 and is not the
  candidate.

The ordering constraint is the point: **question 1 lands before question 2 starts**, or adopting an IR makes
the growth problem worse rather than better.

## After — the feedback loop

11. **`finding-feedback-loop`** (design generated, awaiting approval). Its ledger and dismissals are useful
    immediately; its *evolution* should not be trusted until step 5 or 6 lands a second true-positive
    checkout. The boundary is fixed: an optimiser may evolve the **question**, never the **facts**.

## Not now, and why

- **`authorization-obligations`** (24 open tasks, approved) — the dominance arbiter delivered its substance by
  another route. It should be reconciled or retired rather than worked, and carrying it as "approved, not
  started" misrepresents both.
- **`reachability-flow-model`** (23 open, nothing approved) — largely delivered by adopting Joern. Same
  treatment.
- **`constrained-detector`** (4 of 20, tasks unapproved) — parked.
- **More corpus volume.** 198 of 238 OWASP pairs were left unvendored deliberately: volume without
  readability makes every number worse, and the corpus is not the binding constraint. Reachability is.
- **A second CPG engine, a server mode, an execution rung.** Server mode was measured and declined (6% of a
  scan). The other two have no evidence calling for them yet.

## How to know it is working

The scoreboard in `overview.md`, and one question: **can a developer run this on a repository they did not
write and get something they act on?** Today that is true for one Python application and false for one C
library, and the specs above are ordered by what changes that.

A release is ready when that question is answered **yes for WordPress and honestly for libpng** — found for
the one whose class we decide, and a stated limit for the one we do not. Both are release criteria; only one
of them is a detection claim.