PACE

Find every compliance violation in your codebase, auto-fix them with verified patches, and generate the audit-ready evidence trail that proves it — without hiring a security consultant.

Install

PACE ships as the pace-agents Python package and exposes the pace CLI.

# Recommended for local CLI use
pipx install pace-agents

# Standard Python install
pip install pace-agents

# Homebrew tap
brew install 01x-in/tap/pace-agents

After installing, run:

pace --help
pace init --profile hipaa

What is PACE?

PACE is a CLI tool for engineering teams that need to demonstrate code-level compliance — HIPAA, SOC2, PCI-DSS — without a dedicated security team. It combines a two-pass audit loop with a four-agent fix loop to go from raw codebase to timestamped evidence artifact in a single workflow.

Snyk finds. PACE finds, fixes, and proves.

How it works

Step 1 — Initialize

pace init --profile hipaa

Select your compliance framework (hipaa, soc2, pci-dss, or all) and configure your LLM endpoint in pace.toml. Pass 1 scanning works entirely offline with no LLM calls — pure AST pattern matching, always free.

Step 2 — Scan

pace scan

Runs a two-pass audit of your codebase:

• Pass 1 — tree-sitter AST pattern matching against the YAML rule library. Deterministic, no LLM, zero cost. Runs in CI too.
• Pass 2 — an autoresearch-style agent loop that walks every function in the code index, reviewing each one for compliance violations with an accumulated audit journal. Review 47 knows what reviews 1–46 found — this is how PACE catches violations that span multiple files.

Step 3 — Fix

pace fix

Runs the four PACE agents on open findings (see below).

Step 4 — Report

pace report

Generates three timestamped evidence artifacts in .pace/:

Each finding is mapped to its specific compliance control (e.g., HIPAA §164.312(a)(1), PCI-DSS Req 3.4, SOC2 CC6.1). The HTML report includes color-coded severity and status badges, syntax-highlighted before/after diffs, and Evaluator verdict for every fixed finding.

The Four PACE Agents

PACE is an acronym. The fix loop runs four specialist agents sequentially — the output of each becomes the input of the next. Each agent has a single, focused job, and can be retried independently on failure.

Planner → [for each finding group]:
  Author → Coder → Evaluator
    ↑_______________|  (on reject, up to N retries)

After retry cap:  finding → needs-human-review
After accept:     finding → fixed, patch staged, evidence recorded

P — Planner

Receives the complete audit journal and the full list of open findings. Ranks violations by severity and compliance framework weight, then clusters related findings that share a root cause or fix strategy (e.g., multiple PHI-in-logs violations stemming from the same logging utility).

• Input: Audit journal + open findings list
• Output: Ordered fix plan with severity rankings and fix strategy hints
• Does NOT: Write code, apply patches, or validate anything

A — Author

Receives a single finding group from the Planner, the relevant functions from the code index, and any fix strategy hint. Proposes a concrete code patch — not a general suggestion, but a specific diff. On retry, receives the Evaluator's failure context and must revise its proposal.

• Input: Finding group + relevant code + fix strategy hint (+ failure context on retry)
• Output: Proposed code patch (diff)
• Does NOT: Apply the patch or run tests

C — Coder

Receives the Author's proposed patch and applies it to a feature branch, then runs the project's existing test suite against the patched branch. Purely mechanical — applies the patch, runs the tests, reports results.

• Input: Proposed patch + branch ref
• Output: Patch application status + test suite results (pass/fail counts, failure output)
• Does NOT: Judge correctness, re-scan for compliance, or interpret test failures

E — Evaluator

The acceptance gate. Re-runs the compliance scan on the patched branch, checking that (1) tests pass, (2) the original finding is gone, and (3) no new violations were introduced. A fix is accepted only if all three conditions hold. On rejection, returns structured failure context to the Author for retry. After the retry cap (default: 3), the finding is flagged needs-human-review and the loop moves on.

• Input: Test results + patched branch
• Output: Accept or reject decision + structured failure context (on reject)
• Does NOT: Write code or propose alternatives — only accepts or rejects

What PACE scans for

Three categories across all compliance profiles:

The compliance profile is a config layer that determines which rules are prioritized and which framework controls appear in the evidence output — same detection engine, different audit language.

Rulesets

Rule packs are distributed separately from the PACE engine — install only what your audit requires.

# See what's installed and what's available
pace rules ls

# Install a pack
pace rules install hipaa
pace rules install hipaa --global   # install to ~/.pace/rulesets/ (shared across projects)

# Keep packs up to date
pace rules update
pace rules update hipaa

pace rules ls shows installed packs alongside all available packs from pace.watch:

Installed packs
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  PROFILE      TIER         VERSION    SCOPE      PATH
  hipaa        community    1.2.0      global     ~/.pace/rulesets/hipaa/...

Available packs
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  PROFILE      DESCRIPTION
  soc2         SOC 2 Type II — availability, confidentiality, change management
  pci-dss      PCI DSS v4.0 — cardholder data, transmission security, authentication
  gdpr         GDPR — personal data exposure, consent signals, data minimisation
  nist         NIST CSF — identify, protect, detect, respond, recover controls
  iso27001     ISO 27001 — information security management system controls

  Visit pace.watch/rules for expert-reviewed rulesets — HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR and more.

Each rule is tagged with a universal category (encryption, secrets-credentials, audit-logging, etc.) that works across frameworks — so a --category encryption filter surfaces all encryption gaps regardless of whether the finding came from HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or NIST rules.

CI integration

pace scan --diff HEAD~1 --pass1-only

Scans only changed files using Pass 1 (AST pattern matching only — no LLM calls) and exits non-zero on new violations. Drop it in your PR checks to block merges that introduce compliance regressions.

Without --pass1-only, pace scan also runs Pass 2 (the LLM audit loop) and requires a configured LLM endpoint.

Key design decisions

• Zero vendor lock-in — bring your own LLM endpoint via pace.toml (OpenRouter, Ollama, vLLM, any OpenAI-compatible provider). PACE never hardcodes a provider.
• Privacy controlled by you — your code never leaves your machine unless you point PACE at a remote endpoint. Use Ollama (http://localhost:11434/v1) for fully local LLM inference, vLLM on your own GPU, or any OpenAI-compatible provider. Pass 1 (AST scanning) is always local and always free — no LLM required.
• BYOE (Bring Your Own Endpoint) — no provider is hardcoded. Configure any OpenAI-compatible endpoint in pace.toml: Ollama, vLLM, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI. Air-gapped healthcare environments can run Pass 1 fully offline and Pass 2 with a local Ollama instance.
• Content-hash finding IDs — findings survive code refactoring without false regressions.
• Bounded context — the audit loop uses compressed journal summaries, not full review transcripts. Works on codebases of any size.
• Delta audits — .pace/audit-state.json persists finding status across runs; only new or regressed findings re-enter the loops.

Tech stack

• Python CLI via typer
• Code indexing: codeindex (Go binary, tree-sitter → SQLite) — installed separately
• LLM integration: single OpenAI-compatible client
• Rule library: YAML rule packs distributed via pace.watch — install with pace rules install <profile> (not bundled in the pip package)
• Audit state: .pace/audit-state.json committed to repo
• Evidence output: structured markdown for developers, JSON for CI pipelines
• Install: pipx install pace-agents — then pace rules install hipaa to pull the rule pack

Compared to alternatives

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