ninenines/cowlib

Executive summary

ninenines/cowlib scores 51 out of 100, which would normally be rated Adequate, but it is rated Weak because its weakest group of dimensions, Testing, is rated Critical. The standard never rates a score more than one step above its weakest group, so a high average can't hide a weak area.

The weakest lens counts most in the score, and here that is Maturity, which scores 41 and is rated Weak. Its Architecture documentation dimension scores 0 out of 10, and until that reaches 4, Maturity can't be rated higher than Adequate. The first actions are to resolve the 1 No automated tests finding(s) in Code Coverage and to resolve the 1 No tests found finding(s) in Test Distribution, and if Maturity rose to 70, the score would rise from 51 to about 58.

Five findings are critical: three in Static Analysis (SAST), one in Code Coverage and one in Fold determinism.

Watchdog couldn't measure 32 dimensions in this code, among them Dependency Hygiene, License Compliance and ADR Quality, so they are left out of the score. The product code is 22,776 lines, which would take an estimated 0.1 person-years, around €21,000, to rebuild.

A lens is capped at Adequate while one of its dimensions scores below 4 out of 10, however well the rest of the lens does. That way a serious problem in one place always shows in the lens's rating.

Top priorities

The three actions that raise the score most for the work they take. The full ranked list is in the Roadmap.

Diagnosis: what the measurements show together

Each conclusion below combines several dimensions into one point that no single dimension shows, and lists the measurements it rests on.

At a glance — Code Health · 62% · Adequate · gated by X3 ·

At a glance — Architecture · 100% · Exemplary ·

At a glance — Maturity · 41% · Weak · gated by M2 ·

At a glance — Readiness · 43% · Weak · gated by D8, D9 ·

At a glance — Security · 100% · Exemplary ·

At a glance — Event Sourcing · 72% · Strong ·

Security & Compliance — OWASP Top-10 mapping

Findings mapped to OWASP categories; the specific CVEs/secrets are in the Security dimension cards below and findings.md (redacted only on the public version of this report).

Roadmap

Begin by addressing the single gaps in code coverage and test distribution to ensure baseline quality. Simultaneously, stabilize high-risk areas by resolving the five churn and complexity hotspots, prioritizing cow_http_hd.erl, cow_cookie.erl, and cow_ws.erl. Establish architectural clarity by documenting significant design decisions in the docs/adr folder and expand the README with a getting-started guide, architecture overview, and project map.

Ranked by impact ÷ effort. "Helps" is the estimated gain on the 0–100 health score.

File quality

Per-file score 0–10 — a quality signature. Of 15 files carrying findings, judged against the Production bar: 7% slop · 46% mixed · 47% near-clean.

How the grades work

Every finding carries one of four grades. Three say how serious it is. The fourth says this survey could not settle it — and it is a grade, not a gap.

Methodology & how to trust this report

Watchdog is a deep, periodic assessment — run each sprint, monthly, or quarterly, taking the time to go wider and deeper than a quick check and surfacing in one coherent report what you'd otherwise piece together from a dozen separate tools. It scores deterministically: the same commit yields the same score, every run. 31 of 34 evaluated dimensions are computed purely by tools and static analysis (confidence 1.0); 3 documentation/naming judgement(s) are LLM-assisted and labelled advisory. Overall confidence is 0.8 — the weighted average across measured dimensions; it falls as more of the score leans on LLM-assisted judgement and rises when it's fully tool-backed.

Every figure here is one of three kinds, and we label which: ✓ Measured — a deterministic fact (LoC, complexity, coverage); ~ Modeled — an estimate from a stated model (cost, effort, value-at-risk), always a range with its assumptions, never a precise fact; ◐ Advisory — an LLM prose judgement. We never present a modelled estimate as if it were measured. Perfect or absent scores carry their provenance too (ADR-0011): ✓ Tool-verified means the property itself was measured across the surface; ○ Nothing flagged means the probes came back clean — a claim bounded by what a repository can show; ⊘ Not evidenced means a working control (a tested restore, an automated rollback) showed no positive evidence — absence of evidence is not evidence of a control, so it's excluded from the score rather than awarded a spurious 10; ◐ Sampled · advisory marks an LLM verdict over a bounded sample — advisory, never a deterministic measurement.

Tools & methods

The actual versions used this run (captured at analysis time) — re-run on the same commit for the identical score.

Every finding is locatable in findings.md. Run 01a16a34-09e9-74a3-8cf1-3c0d3f1f66e6.

The exact command behind every deep-scan dimension — tool, version, invocation and retained raw output — is in Appendix B — Reproduction & audit trail.

Run transparency — what happened this run

What ran differently this time — a tool absent, degraded, or that fell back to an estimate. Named openly, not folded silently into the scores. A degraded run also records its exact cause in diagnostics.md.

• D12 Dependency Hygiene — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This repository's dependency manifest (a rebar.config / erlang.mk DEPS (Hex)) was found, but this pass cannot parse it for hygiene, so no package was assessed. Zero packages read is NOT a clean dependency tree, so this is NOT SCORED — a gap in the analyzer, not a verdict about this repository. This row is about dependency HYGIENE — outdated, deprecated or unmaintained direct dependencies; known CVEs in the same dependency graph are a separate question, reported under D30 wherever the manifest is OSV-readable.
• D14 License Compliance — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. Not scored — this repository's package manifest is not parsed for licence data yet. A gap in the analyzer's language coverage, NOT a finding that the repository's licenses are compliant (a rebar.config / erlang.mk DEPS (Hex)), which this pass does not parse yet — so this dimension asserts nothing about this repository's licensing in either direction.
• D16 Bus Factor — not measured this run — This is a true statement about the repository that carries nothing for its owner to act on, so it is reported here rather than as a defect in their code. Single-maintainer repository — bus factor is not applicable (34 contributor(s) across 494 commit(s) sampled, automation and bot accounts excluded). One of them holds 89% of the history; the other 33 hold 0.3% each on average, below the 5% at which there is somebody to hand the work to. That is a single maintainer with drive-by contributors, not a team whose knowledge has concentrated — so the bus factor is not applicable and there is nothing here for the owner to act on.
• D20 ADR Quality — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. The ADR expectation is gated on whether a repository ships a deployable product. Our repo-kind classifier reads .NET project files and the host and package markers of the other ecosystems it knows (a Go `package main`, a Cargo binary, a package.json `bin`, `start` script or application dev server such as Vite or Next, Python console scripts or a Django/WSGI entry point, a Spring Boot / WAR / Gradle application build, a Rack or Rails app, a Composer project, an OTP release or escript, a Dockerfile, a Procfile, a Platform.sh `.platform/routes.yaml`, and the corresponding published-package manifests, including an OTP `*.app.src`, a Drupal module's `*.info` and a Claude Code `.claude-plugin/plugin.json`), and found none here, so we could not tell what kind of repository this is and did not assess its ADR log. This is a gap in our analyzer, not a finding about this repository.
• D22 Internal API Consistency — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. D22 identifies the intentionally-exposed surface from `IsPackable` and `.Contracts` project names, MSBuild conventions read off the loaded project set. This target exposed no such projects, so the probe never ran; this says nothing about whether the repository has a public API. This repository commits no C#/VB source at all, so there was never an MSBuild project set to read these conventions off. That is OUR side and it is a COLLECTOR gap, not an environment fault: no published-package marker D22 reads admitted any project here, so this ecosystem's public API has no collector, and the remedy is to write one — no change to the scan image can close it.
• D44 Platform End-of-Life — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This dimension reads a project's own statement about the platform it runs on: a TargetFramework in a .NET project file, a .nvmrc or .python-version, a capped requires-python, a Rust toolchain file or Cargo.toml rust-version, a .go-version, .java-version, .ruby-version, .tool-versions or .sdkmanrc, a go.mod go directive, a Maven or Gradle Java level or toolchain, a Gemfile's ruby directive, a mix.exs elixir requirement, a rebar.config minimum_otp_vsn, a pubspec.yaml SDK constraint, a build.sbt scalaVersion, or a framework major pinned by a dependency constraint. This repository carries none of them, so nothing about its platform was established. That is a gap in this analyzer's coverage, NOT a finding that the platform is supported — a language whose runtime is declared elsewhere (Package.swift, a Dockerfile) is simply not read here yet.
• AX6 Interface segregation — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check is computed over the public interfaces this run's compilations declare, and none was loaded, so it had nothing to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• C1 Data Protection — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. These personal data controls are read from declarative annotations, request middleware, entity/column names and guard methods in a C# source model, and none was loaded on this run, so there was nothing to gather. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository lacks personal data controls.
• C2 Access Controls — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. These authorization controls are read from declarative annotations, request middleware, entity/column names and guard methods in a C# source model, and none was loaded on this run, so there was nothing to gather. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository lacks authorization controls.
• C3 Audit Trail — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. These audit controls are read from declarative annotations, request middleware, entity/column names and guard methods in a C# source model, and none was loaded on this run, so there was nothing to gather. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository lacks audit controls.
• C4 Data Retention — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. These retention controls are read from declarative annotations, request middleware, entity/column names and guard methods in a C# source model, and none was loaded on this run, so there was nothing to gather. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository lacks retention controls.
• C5 Data-Subject Rights — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. These data-subject rights controls are read from declarative annotations, request middleware, entity/column names and guard methods in a C# source model, and none was loaded on this run, so there was nothing to gather. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository lacks data-subject rights controls.
• GD1 Unfinished & placeholder code — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, F#, JavaScript/TypeScript, Dart, Ruby and Scala source only, and no C#, F#, JavaScript/TypeScript, Dart, Ruby or Scala was found, and this repository's Erlang is not read yet, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• IC1 Incompleteness & stubs — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Dart, Ruby and Scala source only, and no C#, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Dart, Ruby or Scala was found, and this repository's Erlang is not read yet, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• P5 DR & Backup — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. No backup/snapshot/replication config, RTO/RPO or restore-procedure documentation was found. Whether there is anything here to recover could NOT be determined: persistence is detected from deployment/container manifests and from dependency manifests, and neither was readable by this pass, so a data store this code opens directly — a file, an embedded database — would not be visible to it. The blindness is this analyzer's, not a finding that the repository holds no data. You can widen what we reach: keep the deployment/container manifest or a dependency manifest in this repository — or a link to the ops repo that holds the DR evidence — so the persistence probe has something to read.
• P8 Schema migrations — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads EF Core usage in C# and the schema tooling its file scan recognises only, and no .NET project was loaded, and this repository's language is not one the scan models, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• S1 Web-Security Posture — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. These web-security controls are read from declarative annotations, request middleware, entity/column names and guard methods in a C# source model, and none was loaded on this run, so there was nothing to gather. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository lacks web-security controls.
• X1 Async correctness — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala, Rust and Kotlin source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala, Rust or Kotlin was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X12 Unreachable branch — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala and Kotlin source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala or Kotlin was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X13 Undrained process stream — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala and Kotlin source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala or Kotlin was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X14 Bypassable address classification — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Scala, Rust, Swift, Ruby, Dart, PHP, Python and Go source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Scala, Rust, Swift, Ruby, Dart, PHP, Python or Go was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X15 Unvalidated length from an untrusted reader — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Scala, PHP, Ruby, Python, Go, Rust and Dart source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Scala, PHP, Ruby, Python, Go, Rust or Dart was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X16 Unfloored truncation loop — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, PHP, Dart, Ruby, Scala and Kotlin source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, PHP, Dart, Ruby, Scala or Kotlin was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X17 Uncapped recursion over a caller-supplied document — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala and Kotlin source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala or Kotlin was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X18 Disposal-pattern correctness — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Dart, Ruby, Scala and PHP source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Dart, Ruby, Scala or PHP was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X19 Unrestored process-global state — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala and PHP source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala or PHP was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X2 Cancellation propagation — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, PHP, Dart, Kotlin, Ruby, Scala, Java, Python and Rust source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, PHP, Dart, Kotlin, Ruby, Scala, Java, Python or Rust was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X23 Unguarded diagnostic materialisation — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, F#, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala, Kotlin and PHP source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, F#, Python, Dart, Ruby, Scala, Kotlin or PHP was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X24 Document value interpolated into markup unescaped — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Scala, Ruby and Python source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Scala, Ruby or Python was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X29 Per-element action decided by a fixed element — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Rust, Dart, Ruby, Scala and Kotlin source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Rust, Dart, Ruby, Scala or Kotlin was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X30 Support guard that admits what it rejects — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and Scala, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Python, PHP, Go, Rust, Dart and Ruby source only, and no C# was loaded and no Scala, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Python, PHP, Go, Rust, Dart or Ruby was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X4 Structured logging — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C# syntax, and JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Python, PHP, Dart, Ruby, Scala and Rust source only, and no C# was loaded and no JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Python, PHP, Dart, Ruby, Scala or Rust was found in this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.
• X7 Silent fallback defaults — not measured this run — Watchdog could not measure this here. That is a gap on our side — a collector, parser or image we have not built yet — and it is neither a defect in this repository nor evidence that the check would have passed. This check reads C#, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Go, Java, Kotlin, Scala, PHP, Ruby, Swift and Dart syntax only, and no C#, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Go, Java, Kotlin, Scala, PHP, Ruby, Swift or Dart was loaded for this repository, so it had nothing of this repository's product to read. That is a gap in this analyzer's language reach — not a finding that the repository is free of what this check looks for.

Repo exclusion declarations (.gitattributes linguist-generated/vendored, .editorconfig generated_code): none declared — every source file was scored.

Limitations & what we did not check

Watchdog assesses the repository exactly as committed, and only the repository. By design it does not reach outside the source tree: the live cloud account, the running CI/CD pipeline, the host's branch-protection and approval rules, the production configuration, or a restore actually exercised against a backup are all out of scope. That boundary is a feature, not a gap — a repo-relative, deterministic scan re-runs identically on any commit and every finding opens at a real file and line, where a live audit can neither be reproduced nor traced. The visible consequence is that controls which leave no in-repo evidence are reported as "not evidenced" and excluded from the score rather than awarded a number a static scan cannot justify.

Per-dimension blind spots

For each dimension that was measured, what a static, repo-only scan structurally cannot see — the honest edge of the measurement, not a failure of it.

• D1 Cyclomatic Complexity: Cyclomatic complexity counts branches statically — it cannot tell an essential decision tree from accidental tangle, nor see complexity that lives in data or configuration (large switch-case token tables, DSL lexers/parsers, data-as-code rule tables) rather than control flow: a tokenizer's many single-character cases read as high complexity though each branch is trivial.
• D2 Cognitive Complexity: Cognitive-complexity heuristics approximate how hard code is to follow; genuine domain difficulty and well-named intent that eases reading are not captured.
• D3 God Classes: "God class" is sized by members and responsibilities visible in the type — a deliberately broad facade over a coherent subsystem can read the same as an accidental grab-bag. For front-end JS the file-length check is cohesion-aware (a single-responsibility module — one class/IIFE — earns a 3× threshold), but cohesion is approximated from top-level declarations, not true dependency structure.
• D4 Code Duplication: Duplication is token-similarity — an in-process token-stream comparison over sliding windows, with type-aware normalization — so it finds copy-paste, not semantic duplication expressed differently. Committed machine-written code (scaffolded migrations, designer/codegen output, protobuf/OpenAPI stubs, model snapshots) is EXCLUDED — its repetition is the tool's, not the team's — so the score reflects hand-written duplication only.
• D6 Cohesion (LCOM4): LCOM4 cohesion is syntactic — it infers connectivity from which methods touch which fields/methods by name, not from real runtime behaviour or intent.
• D8 Code Coverage: Coverage is measured by building and running the test suite inside Watchdog's isolated image — the target repo is never modified, and nothing on your systems runs. So coverage exists only when the suite builds and runs within the inline time budget; one that needs external services, can't build, or exceeds the budget yields no coverage (D8 then degrades to not-measured, not a low score). Line coverage also says nothing about assertion quality.
• D9 Test Distribution: The test-pyramid shape is inferred from project/folder naming and references, with a single test host bucketed per-file by its path tier and content signals — a suite that names tiers unconventionally and gives no per-file signal can still be mis-bucketed.
• D13 Secret Scanning: Secret detection is signature- and entropy-based on the current tree — a secret that does not match a known pattern, or one already rotated, will not be flagged (a clean scan is "nothing matched", not "no secrets exist").
• D15 Churn × Complexity Hotspots: Churn hotspots come from git history — a freshly imported or squashed repository has no churn signal, and recent rewrites can mask a historically risky file.
• D17 Explicit Debt: Acknowledged-debt signals (TODO/FIXME, suppressions, dead code) are textual — undocumented debt that nobody marked, and debt that lives in design rather than annotations, is invisible. Committed machine-written code (scaffolded migrations, designer/codegen output, generated stubs) is excluded — it is never the team's dead code to delete.
• D19 Documentation Quality: Documentation quality is judged by an LLM over a bounded sample of docs — it reads what is written, not whether the docs match the running system, and it is advisory, not a measurement. Its critique rows are drawn from a closed category vocabulary and each row means the same thing in every run, so two scans can be compared row by row; the SET that fires is still a sample, and does not repeat exactly. Measured on one frozen input, six scans at one engine SHA: 2-5 critique rows per scan, 8 distinct rows across the six, 3 of those 8 seen in only one scan. So a D19 row is evidence about the documentation, but a COUNT of D19 rows is not a quantity — never read a change in it as an improvement or a regression.
• D21 Naming Consistency: Naming quality is an LLM judgement over a bounded sample — it assesses clarity/consistency of the names it sees, not domain-correctness, and is advisory.
• D26 Project Cohesion: Project focus is sized from members/namespaces per project — a project that is broad by deliberate design reads the same as one that has sprawled.
• D27 Navigability: Indirection/navigability is structural — it measures hops to follow a call, not whether that indirection buys real flexibility or just ceremony.
• D28 Secrets (history): Secret-history scanning sweeps the git log for known patterns — a secret that predates the available history, or never matched a signature, is not found (clean means "nothing matched in the history we can see").
• D29 Static Analysis (SAST): SAST findings are pattern-based (semgrep) — it finds classes of bug it has rules for; logic flaws, auth/authorization gaps and issues needing runtime context are out of reach (and clean means "no rule matched").
• D34 Knowledge Freshness: Freshness is decayed commit RECENCY, not comprehension — code read often but rarely committed reads as orphaned, and stable code that genuinely needs no changes is penalised the same as forgotten code; bot/squash commits distort it like the bus factor.
• D35 Change Coupling: Change coupling is co-change in COMMITS — files split across separate commits, or coupled only through a shared config/build step, read as uncoupled, and a sweeping commit (rename/format) is excluded so it doesn't couple everything. It shows that files change together, not WHY: a high coupling can be a healthy cohesive pair as readily as a hidden leak.
• AX10 Code composition: Role is inferred from namespace/folder convention, not semantics — a domain concept living in a folder named "Services" reads as application, and the split is lines-of-code, not business value. The business-logic-share score is a SOFT, FLOORED signal: it contributes to the Architecture lens but is floored at the Critical gate, so an infrastructure-heavy design (a gateway, an ETL, a driver) is legitimately low without being nuked to zero.
• M4 Documentation accuracy: Onboarding quality is an LLM read of the docs/setup present — it cannot run the onboarding or measure how long a real new joiner takes; the verdict is sampled and advisory.
• P6 Release Hygiene: Rollback/observability controls are inferred from repo artefacts (pipelines, dashboards-as-code) — controls configured in external tooling, with no in-repo trace, cannot be credited.

The LLM boundary

LLM-set scores this run (3): D19, D21, M4 (model: Local LLM). For these, a model reads a bounded sample and sets the numeric score; each names its own sample and method on its card. They are sampled and advisory by design: they vary at the margins between runs and are never a deterministic measurement. Every other score in this report is tool-computed at confidence 1.0.

Dimensions

Frontend & cross-cutting dimensions

R = React/JS · M = Maturity · P = Readiness.

Reference — by lens

The score is the rank-weighted fold of these lenses (worst-heaviest), each including its meta-dimensions; a lens with a Critical contributor is capped at Fair (its band reads "gated by …") and is never the strongest area however high its average.

Appendix A — Findings (grouped)

The findings behind the scores, grouped by severity, then by dimension and kind. The high-severity issues are enumerated in full below; items per group are capped at 25 with any overflow stated explicitly per group, never silently truncated. The complete machine-readable list of every finding (all severities) is the companion findings.md in this report's bundle.

Appendix B — Reproduction & audit trail

Every external tool invocation behind a deep-scan dimension — the tool, its captured version, the exact command, how many findings it yielded, and a link to the retained raw output. To reproduce any finding: check out the same commit and run the command shown (repo-relative — never an absolute scratch path). The complete raw scanner output is retained verbatim under artifacts/raw/ (indexed in artifacts/raw/index.json); per-invocation exit codes and wall-clock durations are in sidecar.json — kept out of this table so the rendered report stays byte-identical across runs of the same commit.

Run 01a16a34-09e9-74a3-8cf1-3c0d3f1f66e6 · every finding is also locatable in findings.md, and the complete scoring record (with exit codes + durations) in sidecar.json.

Issues: 5 · Warnings: 58 · Recommendations: 11 — Appendix A · all findings · full markdown report.
Generated by Watchdog — deterministic code-health analysis. 23-10-2026 @ 19:19 UTC.