audit-domain-07-reliability

name	audit-domain-07-reliability
description	Audit the reliability domain - error handling, retries, idempotency, race conditions, partial failures, timeouts, graceful degradation. Run as part of /audit Phase E.

Skill: Audit Domain 7 - Reliability & Edge Cases

This skill audits one specific domain. Run it as an isolated pass from the audit-orchestrator: either in a fresh delegated context when the host supports delegation, or sequentially in the main context when it does not. Load this skill and the audit rules, audit only the requested scope, and return a concise findings report.

Pre-flight

view ../references/audit-rules.md
view ../references/domain-audit-contract.md

If you have findings from previous audit phases (hard stops, Tambon, blind spots), the orchestrator passes them as input. Use them - don't re-discover findings other phases already produced. Specifically:

• Hard stops related to this domain: H5
• Blind spots that route to this domain: B2, B5, B6, B10, B11

If the orchestrator didn't pass you these inputs, do NOT re-run the hard-stops or blind-spots walks. Audit your domain only and trust the orchestrator to stitch.

Scope

Error handling completeness, retry logic, idempotency, race conditions, partial failures, timeouts, graceful degradation, circuit breakers, bulkheads.

Key questions to answer

For each, find the evidence and report it. The questions are the audit's spine - every finding maps back to one of them.

1. Does every external call have a timeout-
2. Are retries bounded (no infinite retry loops)-
3. Are write operations idempotent where they need to be-
4. Are partial failures handled (multi-step ops that succeed halfway)-
5. Are exceptions logged with enough context to debug, or just swallowed-
6. Does the app degrade gracefully when a dependency is down-

Mandatory enumeration before verdict

Before writing a finding or a "no findings" verdict for Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, or Q6, produce the inventories below. Do not answer from memory. For every match, read the surrounding code and classify it in the requested bucket; include inventory counts and representative path:line evidence in the domain report.

Q1/Q6 external dependency timeout inventory (mandatory)

Run:

rg -n "(fetch\(|axios\.|requests\.|httpx\.|urllib|got\(|superagent|OpenAI|Anthropic|MercadoPago|stripe|twilio|sendgrid|supabase\.|s3\.|boto3|redis\.|createClient\()" -g '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs,cjs,py,go,java,cs,php,rb}' .
find . -type f \( -name '*client*' -o -name '*service*' -o -name '*api*' -o -name '*integration*' \) -not -path './node_modules/*' -not -path './.git/*'

Classify every external call as timeout-configured, no-timeout, or timeout-inherited. Verdict requirement: Q1 and Q6 are not safe until every dependency call has a timeout/degradation classification.

Q2/Q3 retry and idempotency inventory (mandatory)

Run:

rg -n "(retry|Retry|backoff|while\s*\(|for\s*\(|setInterval|queue|job|idempot|dedupe|lock|transaction|upsert|ON CONFLICT|unique)" -g '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs,cjs,py,go,java,cs,php,rb,sql}' .
find . -type f \( -name '*job*' -o -name '*queue*' -o -name '*worker*' -o -name '*retry*' \) -not -path './node_modules/*' -not -path './.git/*'

Classify each retry/write path as bounded-retry, unbounded-retry, idempotent-write, or non-idempotent-write. Verdict requirement: Q2 and Q3 need this inventory before a no-finding verdict.

Q4/Q5 error-handler inventory (mandatory)

Run:

rg -n "(try\s*\{|catch\s*\(|except\s+|finally\s*\{|rescue\s+|onError|\.catch\(|throw\s+|raise\s+)" -g '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,mjs,cjs,py,go,java,cs,php,rb}' .
find . -type f \( -name '*error*' -o -name '*exception*' -o -name '*handler*' \) -not -path './node_modules/*' -not -path './.git/*'

Classify every try/catch or error handler as logged+recovered, swallowed, or re-thrown. Verdict requirement: Q4 and Q5 are not safe until swallowed errors and partial-failure paths are classified.

Files most likely to have findings

Don't read everything. Read these files first:

• external API client wrappers
• any 'retry' / 'backoff' utility
• webhook handlers
• background job handlers
• transaction boundaries

If you exhaust these and the budget allows, expand outward. Otherwise, report what you found and note what you didn't read.

Process

1. Re-read the rules. R1-R7 apply to every finding. Especially R2 (quote before cite) - for a domain skill running as an isolated pass, the audit context is fresh; don't assume you remember a file from a previous turn.

2. Walk the key questions. For each question, run the relevant detection commands (greps, file reads, schema lookups). Capture evidence at path:line. Verify by reading the actual code.

3. Cross-reference orchestrator inputs. If the orchestrator passed hard-stops or blind-spots findings tagged for this domain, include them in your report. Don't re-investigate; just include with the provided evidence.

4. Triage. For each finding, set severity per the audit rubric and exploitability per R4.

5. Produce the domain report.

Output format

=======================================================================
  DOMAIN 7: Reliability & Edge Cases
=======================================================================

> FOUNDER VIEW

[2-4 sentences in plain English. Sample tone:]
When something goes wrong (network blip, DB hiccup, third-party outage) - does the app recover, or does it corrupt state-

> TECHNICAL EVIDENCE

Scope of this domain audit:
  Files read:        <count>
  Files skipped:     <count> (reason: outside scope or low-priority)

Findings:

  F-7.1 - <one-line title>
    Severity:        Critical | High | Medium | Low
    Exploitability:  EXPLOITABLE-NOW | EXPLOITABLE-LOW-EFFORT | BAD-PRACTICE | UNKNOWN
    Hard-stop:       H<N> if applicable
    Blind-spot:      B<N> if applicable

    Evidence:
      <path:line>  <one-line description>

    What's wrong:
      <one paragraph>

    Why it matters:
      <one sentence>

    Recommended fix:
      <one paragraph; for full fix prompt, use /audit-fix F-7.1>

    Verification after fix:
      <command>

  F-7.2 ...

Summary:
  Total findings: <count>
  By severity:    <counts>
  Most urgent:    <which finding ID>

[SECTION COMPLETE: Domain 7]

If the domain has zero findings:

> TECHNICAL EVIDENCE

  PASS: No findings in this domain.

  Verification:
    <commands run that produced no signal>

  Confidence: High | Medium | Low
  Reason for low confidence: <if applicable>

Failure modes to refuse

• FAIL: Producing findings without path:line citations (R1)
• FAIL: Citing a path you didn't read (R2)
• FAIL: Re-running hard-stops or blind-spots walks (orchestrator did this)
• FAIL: Including findings outside this domain's scope (route them to the right domain instead)
• FAIL: Soft-pedaling a Critical to Medium because "it's a small app" (R3)
• FAIL: Skipping section completion marker (R6)

---

Codex Port Notes

• Audit mode is read-only for product code unless the user explicitly requests remediation.
• Treat .claude/, .codex/, .agents/, .gitnexus/, caches, node_modules/, virtualenvs, and generated build outputs as tooling or generated scope unless the finding is specifically repo hygiene.
• Prefer PowerShell equivalents on Windows; use rg before grep and Get-ChildItem before Unix find when running in PowerShell.
• If GitNexus MCP tools are unavailable, use .gitnexus/meta.json, .gitnexus/ artifacts, and npx gitnexus CLI as the fallback.
• Findings should also be representable as: {id, domain, severity, exploitability, evidence_path, evidence_line, summary, impact, recommended_fix, verification}.