Open_Ultra_SAST/.kiro/specs/harnessx-self-improving-rulesets/dependency-audit.md

HarnessX Dependency Dry-Run Audit (Task 5.1)

Recorded realized transitive dependency graph and the accept-vs-vendor decision for adopting HarnessX (git+https://github.com/Darwin-Agent/HarnessX.git) in Phase 3.

Method

uv venv /tmp/hx-audit --python 3.11
uv pip install --dry-run --python /tmp/hx-audit/bin/python <HarnessX checkout>

• 118 transitive packages resolved from HarnessX's 30 direct [project.dependencies] (all mandatory upstream; the only extra is dev).
• Pinned versions observed: harnessx 0.1.0, and engine image registry.dagger.io/SDK unrelated; LLM SDKs anthropic 0.111.0, openai 2.43.0, litellm 1.89.3.

Realized transitive graph (118)

aiofiles aiohappyeyeballs aiohttp aiosignal annotated-doc annotated-types anthropic
antlr4-python3-runtime anyio attrs bracex certifi cffi charset-normalizer click cryptography
distro docker dockerfile-parse docstring-parser e2b et-xmlfile fastapi fastuuid filelock
frozenlist fsspec googleapis-common-protos greenlet grpcio h11 h2 harnessx hf-xet hpack
html2text httpcore httptools httpx httpx-sse huggingface-hub hydra-core hyperframe idna
importlib-metadata jinja2 jiter jsonschema jsonschema-specifications litellm loguru lxml
markdown-it-py markupsafe mcp mdurl multidict omegaconf openai openpyxl opentelemetry-api
opentelemetry-exporter-otlp opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-common
opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-grpc opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-http opentelemetry-proto
opentelemetry-sdk opentelemetry-semantic-conventions packaging pdfminer-six pdfplumber pillow
playwright prompt-toolkit propcache protobuf pycparser pydantic pydantic-core pydantic-settings
pyee pygments pyjwt pypdfium2 python-dateutil python-docx python-dotenv python-multipart
python-pptx pyyaml referencing regex reportlab requests rich rpds-py shellingham six sniffio
sse-starlette starlette structlog tiktoken tokenizers tqdm typer typing-extensions
typing-inspection urllib3 uvicorn uvloop watchfiles wcmatch wcwidth websockets xlsxwriter yarl zipp

Key finding: heavy backends are lazy; ~half the tree is dead weight

Every heavy backend is lazily imported — docker/e2b are TYPE_CHECKING-guarded and imported inside provider factories; playwright is imported inside _get_local_page(); office/PDF libs inside tools/builtin/read.py parse functions; sandbox/__init__.py registers docker/e2b via try/except. The gateway/ is a separate distribution. So the 118-package tree is an install-time cost; at runtime only what a given agent path touches is loaded.

This is the answer to "I don't need most of these": neither OpenUltraSAST (SAST) nor the author's DocuHarnessX (docs) loads the bulk of it — HarnessX simply declares every capability as a mandatory dependency.

Category	Packages	SAST verdict
LLM SDKs	anthropic, openai, litellm, tiktoken, tokenizers, huggingface-hub, hf-xet, jiter, regex, tqdm, fsspec	needed
HTTP / async / pydantic core	httpx(+core/h11/h2/hpack/hyperframe), anyio, aiohttp(+glue), pydantic(+core/settings), certifi, urllib3, requests, sniffio	needed
Config / CLI / logging	hydra-core, omegaconf, antlr4-runtime, typer, click, rich, prompt-toolkit, structlog, loguru, jsonschema(+glue)	needed
Browser automation	playwright, pyee, greenlet, html2text	dead weight (+ out-of-band Chromium binary download via playwright install)
Sandbox backends	docker, dockerfile-parse, e2b	docker = useful (isolate hunter); e2b = dead weight
Web gateway / Lab UI	fastapi, uvicorn, starlette, sse-starlette, httptools, websockets, uvloop, watchfiles, python-multipart, aiofiles	dead weight (server surface; never started by a headless embed)
gRPC + OpenTelemetry	grpcio, protobuf, googleapis-common-protos, opentelemetry-* (8)	optional (tracing only)
Office / PDF	python-pptx, python-docx, openpyxl, reportlab, pdfplumber, pdfminer-six, pypdfium2, pillow, xlsxwriter, lxml, et-xmlfile	dead weight (SAST reads source, not documents)
MCP	mcp, httpx-sse	optional (only if the agent calls MCP tools)

Roughly 55–60 packages are opt-in capability weight pulled in mandatorily, including a browser binary and a Docker SDK — an awkward footprint for a supply-chain auditing tool.

Decision

ACCEPT HarnessX as the optional, SHA-pinned extra openultrasast[harnessx], lazy-imported behind _has_harnessx(). Keep a pre-specified vendored lean subset as a documented, triggered fallback. Pursue upstream dependency-extras as the preferred long-term slimming path.

Rationale:

1. Footprint is fully opt-in. Core dependencies = [] stays zero-dep; the governance / scoring / benchmark / detection planes never pull HarnessX. Only openultrasast[harnessx] installs the tree, and lazy imports keep heavy backends cold unless the path runs.
2. Author precedent. DocuHarnessX already ships harnessx as a direct git dependency — the ModelConfig.agentic integration is proven and maintained. OpenUltraSAST reuses the mechanism but tightens the posture (opt-in, not direct).
3. Lower maintenance than vendoring. Accept + SHA-pin gives reproducibility without a fork; vendoring is paid only if the installed graph is itself judged unacceptable.

Preferred long-term: upstream dependency-extras (helps both projects)

The clean fix for "I don't need most of these" is to modularize HarnessX's own dependencies into extras — e.g. harnessx[browser], harnessx[sandbox-e2b], harnessx[gateway], harnessx[office], harnessx[otel] — leaving a lean agent-runtime core (anthropic/openai/litellm/pydantic/ httpx/hydra/structlog/mcp). Since the author owns the Darwin-Agent/HarnessX line, this is actionable and benefits DocuHarnessX equally. OpenUltraSAST would then depend on harnessx (lean core) under its [harnessx] extra and add only the subsets it needs.

Vendored lean subset (fallback, fully specified)

If triggered, vendor harnessx/ only:

• KEEP: core/, processors/{control,evaluation,observability,tools,context,memory,multi_model}, meta_harness/, rl/, providers/, tools/builtin/ (minus browser.py/web_*), sandbox/{base,local,docker}.py, plus config/tracing/plugins/bundles/workspace as needed.
• REMOVE: frontend/, gateway/, harnessx/api/ (drops the web-server stack), examples/, docs/, benchmarks/, container/, scripts/, recipe/ (incl. the recipe/verl_harnessX/verl submodule — clone non-recursive regardless), extensions/skills/{docx,pdf,pptx,xlsx} (drops office/PDF), harnessx/sandbox/e2b.py (drops e2b), harnessx/tools/builtin/browser.py (drops playwright + browser binary). Net ≈ 40–60% fewer packages, no browser binary.

Residual risks (security-tool-specific) and mitigations

Risk	Mitigation
playwright install fetches a Chromium binary out-of-band (unaudited, breaks hermetic builds)	Browser path is lazy and never invoked; document that [harnessx] does not trigger a browser download; lean subset deletes browser.py
docker SDK can reach the Docker daemon socket (privilege boundary)	Docker sandbox default-off, LocalSandbox default; run untrusted target code only inside the sandbox; SHA-pin docker/cryptography/cffi
FastAPI/uvicorn listening-socket surface in a security tool	api/ server only starts on the explicit serve path; add a guard test asserting no server starts on import; lean subset removes api/
118-package CVE surface in a supply-chain tool	SHA-pin the entire extra; keep core zero-dep; add a zero-dep CI guard test (importing openultrasast without the extra pulls nothing outside stdlib)
recipe/verl git submodule recursion	Init non-recursively; never in the accept-as-extra install path

Decision date 2026-06-22. The pip install --dry-run audit is itself the Phase-3 gate: it is re-run before the packaging task (5.2), and if the realized graph pulls a browser binary / Docker SDK / FastAPI stack as mandatory (non-lazy) deps judged unacceptable, the spec switches to the vendored lean subset under the same extra name.