production-audit

Production Audit

Use this skill when the user asks whether an application is ready to ship, what could break in production, or what must be fixed before a launch. This is a maintainer-safe rewrite of the stale community production-audit idea: it keeps the useful production-readiness lens and removes unpinned external execution and third-party data sharing.

When to Use

• The user asks "is this production-ready", "what would break in prod", "what did we miss", "audit this repo", or "ready to ship?"
• A feature was merged and needs a pre-deploy or post-merge risk pass.
• A public launch, demo, customer rollout, or investor walkthrough is close.
• CI is green but the user wants production risk, not only test status.
• A deployed URL, release branch, PR, or current checkout is available for evidence gathering.

When Not to Use

• During active implementation when the right lens is line-level secure coding; use security-review first.
• For pure libraries, templates, docs-only repos, or scaffolds unless the user wants packaging/release readiness rather than application readiness.
• When the user asks for a formal compliance audit. This skill is engineering triage, not legal, financial, medical, or regulatory certification.
• When the only available evidence is a product idea with no repo, deployment, CI, or runtime surface.

How It Works

Build the audit from local and user-authorized evidence. Do not run unpinned remote code, upload repository contents to third-party services, or call external scanners unless the user explicitly approves that specific tool and data flow.

Use this order:

1. Establish the release surface.
2. Read recent changes and current branch state.
3. Inspect runtime, auth, data, payment, background-job, AI, and deployment boundaries that actually exist in the repo.
4. Check CI, tests, migrations, environment documentation, and rollback path.
5. Produce a short ship/block recommendation with specific fixes.

Evidence Checklist

Start with cheap, local signals:

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

Then inspect the project-specific surface:

• Package scripts, CI workflows, release scripts, Docker files, and deployment manifests.
• API routes, webhooks, auth middleware, background workers, cron jobs, and database migrations.
• Environment variable documentation and startup checks.
• Observability hooks, error reporting, logs, health checks, and dashboards.
• Rollback, seed, migration, and backfill instructions.
• E2E coverage for the user paths that matter most.

If a deployed URL is in scope, use browser or HTTP checks only against that URL and avoid credentialed actions unless the user supplies a safe test account.

Risk Lenses

Security And Auth

• Are public routes, API routes, and admin routes clearly separated?
• Are auth and authorization enforced server-side?
• Are secrets kept out of client bundles, logs, example output, and checked-in files?
• Are rate limits, CSRF protections, CORS policy, and upload validation present where the app needs them?
• Does the AI or agent surface defend against prompt injection, tool abuse, and untrusted content crossing into privileged actions?

Data Integrity

• Do migrations run forward cleanly and have a rollback or recovery plan?
• Are destructive migrations, backfills, and data imports staged safely?
• Do database policies, grants, and service-role boundaries match the app's tenancy model?
• Are retries idempotent for writes, jobs, and webhook handlers?

Payments And Webhooks

• Are webhook signatures verified before parsing trusted payload fields?
• Is each payment, subscription, or fulfillment webhook idempotent?
• Are replay, duplicate delivery, and out-of-order delivery handled?
• Are test-mode and live-mode credentials separated?

Operations

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

User Experience

• Are the launch-critical paths covered on desktop and mobile?
• Are forms usable on mobile without input zoom, layout overlap, or blocked submission states?
• Do loading, empty, error, and permission-denied states tell the user what happened?
• Is there a support or recovery path when a critical operation fails?

Scoring

Use scores to force prioritization, not to imply mathematical certainty.

Cap the score at 69 if any of these are true:

• Authentication or authorization is missing on sensitive data.
• Payment or fulfillment webhooks are not idempotent.
• Required migrations cannot be run safely.
• Secrets are exposed in client bundles, logs, or committed files.
• There is no rollback path for a high-impact release.

Cap the score 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 fixes if the user wants to improve the score.
• Evidence checked: files, commands, CI, deployed URL, or PRs inspected.
• Evidence missing: what would change confidence if provided.
• Next action: one concrete fix or verification step.

Keep strengths short. The user asked for readiness, so the useful answer is the remaining risk and the next action.

Example

User:

is this ready to ship?

Response:

Production audit: 68/100, risky, because Stripe webhooks are verified but not idempotent and there is no rollback note for the pending migration.

Blockers:
- Add idempotency for `checkout.session.completed` before fulfilling orders.
- Write and test the rollback path for `20260511_add_billing_state.sql`.

High-value fixes:
- Add a health check that verifies database and payment-provider reachability.
- Add one E2E path for upgrade, webhook fulfillment, and billing-page refresh.

Evidence checked:
- `api/stripe/webhook.ts`
- `db/migrations/20260511_add_billing_state.sql`
- GitHub Actions run for the release branch

Next action: Want me to patch webhook idempotency first?

Anti-Patterns

• Running npx <package>@latest or a remote scanner as the default audit path.
• Uploading source, secrets, customer data, or private topology to an external audit service without explicit approval.
• Producing a score without naming the evidence checked.
• Treating green CI as production readiness.
• Ending with a generic "let me know what you want to do."

See Also

• Skill: security-review
• Skill: deployment-patterns
• Skill: e2e-testing
• Skill: tdd-workflow
• Skill: verification-loop