We take security seriously. kotef is an autonomous coding agent that can read and edit files, run commands, and talk to external services — if something goes wrong, it can break a lot of things very quickly.

This document explains how to report vulnerabilities and what you can expect in return.

This is an early‑stage project. We currently treat the main branch as the only supported version for security fixes.

If you discover an issue on a fork or a downstream integration, please try to reproduce it against main first.

If you discover a security vulnerability, please do not open a public GitHub issue.

Instead:

1. Email the maintainer listed on the GitHub profile, or
2. If email is unavailable, open a minimal issue titled “Security issue – please contact me” without details, and we’ll move the conversation to a private channel.

Please include:

• a clear description of the issue,
• minimal steps to reproduce,
• what you think the impact could be,
• any relevant logs or configuration (with secrets removed).

We will:

• acknowledge receipt within 7 days, and
• aim to provide a triage result (confirm / cannot reproduce / not a security issue) within 14 days.

Examples of things we care about:

• Escaping the intended project root (path traversal) despite resolvePath and sandboxing.
• Writing outside the allowed workspace when running in “safe” modes.
• Running arbitrary commands or network calls that bypass the configured policies.
• Leaking secrets or sensitive data through logs, prompts, or external requests.
• Any way the agent can be tricked (e.g., via prompt injection) into violating its own guardrails in a way that causes real harm.

Examples of things that are not treated as security issues:

• Misconfigured environments (e.g., giving rootDir=/, running as root, disabling permission flags).
• Bugs that only affect local correctness (e.g., a broken patch that fails to apply but does not escape the sandbox).

If you report a vulnerability, please give us a reasonable amount of time to fix it before sharing details publicly.

We are happy to credit you in the changelog / release notes unless you prefer to remain anonymous.