proofctl 0.1.8

Zero-dependency linter for Python, Terraform, Dockerfiles, Kubernetes, and GitHub Actions — catches AI slop and security misconfigurations pre-commit

proofctl

Zero-dependency Python linter and infrastructure policy checker for pre-commit hooks. Detects AI-generated slop, security misconfigurations, and quality regressions across Python, Terraform (AWS/GCP/Azure), Dockerfiles, Kubernetes manifests, and GitHub Actions workflows.

proofctl check .

PROOFCTL-S-001  module/auth.py:42    SQL injection via string format in .execute()          ERROR
PROOFCTL-Q-001  module/models.py:17  Mutable default argument — list assigned at def time   ERROR
PROOFCTL-P-001  module/tasks.py:89   Unimplemented function body (pass / ...)               ERROR
PROOFCTL-TF-G004 infra/main.tf:14   GKE node pool has auto-repair disabled                 WARNING
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
4 findings  (3 ERROR, 1 WARNING)  exit 2

---

Why proofctl

AI coding assistants generate plausible-looking code that is frequently:

• Insecure — SQL/command injection, hardcoded secrets, weak crypto, JWT bypass
• Broken — hallucinated imports, phantom methods, pass bodies shipped as real functions
• Fragile — mutable defaults, broad except:, no timeouts, untested paths
• Wasteful — near-duplicate files, single-implementation abstractions, TODO bombs

proofctl is a pre-commit linter purpose-built to catch all of this before it merges. It runs in under a second on a typical repo, requires no internet access, and adds zero runtime dependencies to your project.

---

Installation

pip install proofctl

Requires: Python 3.11+

---

Quick start

# Scan the current directory
proofctl check .

# Scan a single file
proofctl check src/api/auth.py

# Only report ERROR findings
proofctl check . --min-severity ERROR

# Exit non-zero only on ERROR (useful for CI gate)
proofctl check . --fail-on ERROR

# Scan only files changed in this branch
proofctl check . --changed-only

# Run only security and quality families
proofctl check . --families S,Q

# Generate an HTML report
proofctl check . --format html --output report.html

# List all rules
proofctl rules

---

Pre-commit integration

Add to .pre-commit-config.yaml:

repos:
  - repo: local
    hooks:
      - id: proofctl
        name: proofctl
        language: system
        entry: proofctl check
        args: [--no-pypi, --fail-on, ERROR]
        types: [python]
        pass_filenames: false

Or pin from the published GitHub repo:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/kolawoluu/proofctl
    rev: v0.1.0
    hooks:
      - id: proofctl

---

CI integration (GitHub Actions)

name: proofctl

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  proofctl:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.12"
      - run: pip install proofctl

      # --new-only compares against the committed baseline snapshot —
      # CI fails only on regressions introduced in this PR.
      - run: proofctl check . --no-pypi --fail-on ERROR --new-only

      - name: Generate HTML report
        if: failure()
        run: proofctl check . --no-pypi --format html --output proofctl-report.html || true

      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        if: failure()
        with:
          name: proofctl-report
          path: proofctl-report.html
          retention-days: 14

Create a baseline snapshot to suppress pre-existing findings:

proofctl baseline .
git add .proofctl-baseline.json
git commit -m "chore: add proofctl baseline"

---

Rules

Python — Placeholder (P)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-P-001	ERROR	Unimplemented function body (pass, ..., raise NotImplementedError)
PROOFCTL-P-002	WARNING	TODO / FIXME / HACK / XXX comment present
PROOFCTL-P-003	INFO	Commented-out code block

Python — Quality (Q)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-Q-001	ERROR	Mutable default argument (list, dict, set at def time)
PROOFCTL-Q-002	ERROR	Bare except: or broad except Exception with no re-raise
PROOFCTL-Q-003	WARNING	Excessive Any usage or unexplained # type: ignore
PROOFCTL-Q-004	INFO	Single-implementation abstraction (YAGNI violation)
PROOFCTL-Q-005	WARNING/ERROR	High cyclomatic complexity (warn >10, error >20)
PROOFCTL-Q-006	WARNING/ERROR	Function body too long (warn >50 lines, error >100 lines)
PROOFCTL-Q-007	WARNING/ERROR	Too many parameters (warn >5, error >7)
PROOFCTL-Q-008	WARNING	Boolean literal as positional argument (flag argument)
PROOFCTL-Q-009	INFO	print() in non-test code instead of logging

Python — Security (S)

Rule	Severity	Description	Authority
PROOFCTL-S-001	ERROR	SQL injection via string formatting in .execute()	OWASP A03, CWE-89
PROOFCTL-S-002	ERROR	Command injection via shell=True or os.system()	OWASP A03, CWE-78
PROOFCTL-S-003	ERROR	Unsafe deserialization (pickle.loads, yaml.load without SafeLoader)	OWASP A08, CWE-502
PROOFCTL-S-004	ERROR	Weak cryptographic primitive (md5/sha1 for auth, random for secrets)	OWASP A02, CWE-327
PROOFCTL-S-005	ERROR	eval() / exec() on non-literal input	CWE-95
PROOFCTL-S-006	WARNING	Missing timeout= on HTTP calls (requests, httpx)	CWE-400
PROOFCTL-S-007	ERROR	JWT signature bypass (verify_signature: False, algorithms: ["none"])	OWASP A07
PROOFCTL-S-008	ERROR	Path traversal — open() with user-supplied path	CWE-22
PROOFCTL-S-009	ERROR	Insecure UUID for security token (uuid1/uuid3 for token/secret/key)	CWE-338
PROOFCTL-S-010	WARNING	Secret value leaked into logs (password/token in logging.* call)	OWASP A09
PROOFCTL-S-011	ERROR/WARNING	Insecure cipher mode (ECB, ARC4, TripleDES)	OWASP A02
PROOFCTL-S-012	WARNING	Regex injection — non-literal pattern passed to re.compile/re.search	CWE-625
PROOFCTL-S-013	WARNING	Open redirect — redirect() with user-supplied URL	CWE-601

Python — Leakage (L)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-L-001	ERROR	Hardcoded secret or credential in source
PROOFCTL-L-002	WARNING	PII pattern in source (email, SSN, phone number)
PROOFCTL-L-003	WARNING	Cross-language idiom (JS/Java/Go pattern in Python)

Python — Imports (I)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-I-001	WARNING	Import from unknown or unresolvable package (hallucination)
PROOFCTL-I-002	ERROR	High-risk or deprecated package (telnetlib, pickle, etc.)

Python — Methods (M)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-M-001	WARNING	Method too complex — abstraction opportunity

Python — Variants (V)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-V-001	WARNING	Near-duplicate function bodies (DRY violation)
PROOFCTL-V-002	INFO	Near-duplicate file (Jaccard similarity above threshold)

Python — LLM Guardrails (LLM)

Rule	Severity	Description	Authority
PROOFCTL-LLM-001	ERROR	Unsanitised user input in LLM prompt (f-string in content=)	OWASP LLM01
PROOFCTL-LLM-002	WARNING	Missing max_tokens on LLM API call	OWASP LLM10
PROOFCTL-LLM-003	WARNING	LLM API call inside a loop (unbounded cost)	OWASP LLM10
PROOFCTL-LLM-004	WARNING	PII variable name in LLM prompt	OWASP LLM02
PROOFCTL-LLM-005	ERROR	while True: agentic loop with LLM call and no iteration guard	OWASP LLM06

Terraform — General (TF-T)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-TF-T001	ERROR	Empty or null resource block
PROOFCTL-TF-T002	WARNING	count = 0 resource
PROOFCTL-TF-T003	ERROR	Hardcoded secret in resource attribute
PROOFCTL-TF-T004	WARNING	Wildcard IAM permission (*)
PROOFCTL-TF-T005	WARNING	lifecycle { ignore_changes = all }
PROOFCTL-TF-T006	WARNING	Local-only module source (no registry or git ref)
PROOFCTL-TF-T007	ERROR	Mutable git ref in module source (branch / HEAD)
PROOFCTL-TF-T008	WARNING	Missing description on variable
PROOFCTL-TF-T009	WARNING	Missing description on output
PROOFCTL-TF-T010	WARNING	Null-default variable without validation block
PROOFCTL-TF-T011	ERROR	Remote state without encryption
PROOFCTL-TF-T012	WARNING	Provisioner block (prefer cloud-init or user_data)
PROOFCTL-TF-T013	ERROR	Missing required resource labels
PROOFCTL-TF-T014	WARNING	No terraform { required_version } constraint
PROOFCTL-TF-T015	WARNING	Sensitive-named output without sensitive = true

Terraform — GCP (TF-G)

25 rules covering GCP compute, Cloud SQL, GKE, Cloud Storage, IAM, KMS, VPC, Cloud Run, BigQuery, Pub/Sub, and Cloud Functions. Highlights:

• PROOFCTL-TF-G001 — GKE node pool with auto-repair disabled
• PROOFCTL-TF-G004 — Cloud SQL with public IP
• PROOFCTL-TF-G008 — Storage bucket with allUsers ACL
• PROOFCTL-TF-G015 — GCS bucket without versioning
• PROOFCTL-TF-G026 — IAM binding with allUsers / allAuthenticatedUsers
• PROOFCTL-TF-G030 — BigQuery dataset accessible to allAuthenticatedUsers

Terraform — AWS (TF-A)

14 rules covering EC2 IMDSv2, RDS, EKS, EBS, Lambda, ElastiCache, S3, ECR, CloudTrail, and VPC flow logs. Highlights:

• PROOFCTL-TF-A001 — EC2 without IMDSv2 enforced
• PROOFCTL-TF-A003 — RDS with public access
• PROOFCTL-TF-A011 — No CloudTrail resource in file
• PROOFCTL-TF-A014 — Lambda function with hardcoded secret in env vars

Terraform — Azure (TF-AZ)

12 rules covering Azure storage, SQL/Postgres/MySQL, AKS, Key Vault, Monitor, RBAC, App Service, and VMs. Highlights:

• PROOFCTL-TF-AZ001 — Storage account with allow_blob_public_access = true
• PROOFCTL-TF-AZ003 — SQL server with public_network_access_enabled = true
• PROOFCTL-TF-AZ005 — AKS cluster with unrestricted API server access
• PROOFCTL-TF-AZ007 — Key Vault without purge protection
• PROOFCTL-TF-AZ011 — App Service without https_only = true

Terraform — Mechanics (TF-M) and Lifecycle (TF-V)

7 + 4 rules covering security group mixing, ignore_changes = all, external provisioners, force_destroy, prevent_destroy, and mutable module refs.

Terragrunt (TG)

6 rules covering var.* in HCL inputs, missing mock_outputs, invalid if_exists values, and unencrypted remote state.

Dockerfile (DF)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-DF-001	WARNING	FROM uses latest tag
PROOFCTL-DF-002	ERROR	Running as root (USER root or no USER directive)
PROOFCTL-DF-003	WARNING	apt-get install without --no-install-recommends
PROOFCTL-DF-004	ERROR	Secret in ARG or ENV (password/token/key name)
PROOFCTL-DF-005	WARNING	ADD used where COPY is sufficient
PROOFCTL-DF-006	INFO	Multiple RUN commands that could be merged
PROOFCTL-DF-007	ERROR	curl/wget output piped directly to shell
PROOFCTL-DF-008	WARNING	ADD from URL without checksum verification
PROOFCTL-DF-009	WARNING	COPY of dependency manifest without pinned install
PROOFCTL-DF-010	INFO	Missing OCI image labels (org.opencontainers.image.*)

YAML / Kubernetes (YAML-K8S)

13 rules based on Kubernetes Pod Security Standards. Highlights:

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-YAML-009	ERROR	Container missing runAsNonRoot: true
PROOFCTL-YAML-010	ERROR	Container missing allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
PROOFCTL-YAML-011	WARNING	Container missing readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
PROOFCTL-YAML-012	WARNING	Container missing drop: [ALL] capabilities
PROOFCTL-YAML-013	WARNING	Pod missing seccompProfile annotation
PROOFCTL-YAML-014	WARNING	automountServiceAccountToken: true on pod or service account
PROOFCTL-YAML-015	ERROR	ClusterRoleBinding to cluster-admin
PROOFCTL-YAML-016	WARNING	RBAC rule with wildcard verb or resource (*)
PROOFCTL-YAML-017	ERROR	RBAC rule with escalate/impersonate/bind verb
PROOFCTL-YAML-018	WARNING	Deployment/DaemonSet container missing liveness or readiness probe
PROOFCTL-YAML-019	WARNING	Ingress without TLS configuration
PROOFCTL-YAML-020	ERROR	Plaintext secret in environment variable (value: on secret-named var)
PROOFCTL-YAML-021	WARNING	Namespace-scoped RoleBinding using cluster-admin

YAML / GitHub Actions (YAML-GHA)

Rule	Severity	Description
PROOFCTL-YAML-007	ERROR	Expression injection — ${{ github.event.* }} in run: step
PROOFCTL-YAML-GHA-001	ERROR	pull_request_target with actions/checkout of PR head ref
PROOFCTL-YAML-GHA-002	WARNING	Workflow missing top-level permissions: block
PROOFCTL-YAML-GHA-003	WARNING	Secret passed directly to environment variable in workflow
PROOFCTL-YAML-GHA-004	ERROR	ACTIONS_ALLOW_UNSECURE_COMMANDS: true in workflow
PROOFCTL-YAML-GHA-005	WARNING	Job missing timeout-minutes

---

Suppressing findings

Inline suppression for a single line:

result = subprocess.run(cmd, shell=True)  # proofctl: ignore[PROOFCTL-S-002]

Project-wide suppression in .proofctl.yaml:

disable:
  - PROOFCTL-Q-004   # YAGNI check too noisy for this repo

---

Configuration

Place .proofctl.yaml in the project root:

exclude_paths:
  - "**/.venv/**"
  - "**/migrations/**"
  - "**/.terraform/**"

disable:
  - PROOFCTL-Q-004

severity_overrides:
  PROOFCTL-P-002: ERROR   # promote TODOs to ERROR

rules:
  PROOFCTL-P-002:
    allowed_formats:
      - 'TODO\(#\d+\)'    # allow TODO(#123) format
    exclude_paths:
      - tests/

  PROOFCTL-Q-003:
    any_threshold: 5

  PROOFCTL-V-002:
    similarity_threshold: 0.85
    min_file_lines: 30

  PROOFCTL-I-001:
    local_namespaces:
      - mycompany_
      - internal_

  PROOFCTL-TF-T013:
    required_labels:
      - environment
      - team
      - cost_center

---

Commands

proofctl check

proofctl check [PATH] [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --format / -f        terminal | json | html           (default: terminal)
  --output / -o        Write report to file
  --changed-only       Only scan git-changed files
  --families           Comma-separated families: P,Q,S,L,I,M,V,LLM,TF,TG,DF,YAML
  --min-severity       INFO | WARNING | ERROR
  --fail-on            Exit non-zero at this severity (default: WARNING)
  --no-pypi            Skip PyPI lookups (faster, works offline)
  --new-only           Suppress findings present in .proofctl-baseline.json
  --fix                Auto-fix fixable findings (Q-001 mutable defaults)

proofctl baseline

Snapshot the current findings so future --new-only runs only surface regressions.

proofctl baseline .
git add .proofctl-baseline.json && git commit -m "chore: proofctl baseline"

proofctl rules

Print all rule IDs, names, and severities.

---

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	No findings
1	Findings present, none at or above --fail-on threshold
2	One or more findings at or above --fail-on threshold

---

Output formats

Terminal (default) — rich-coloured table with file:line, rule, severity, and hint.

JSON — machine-readable array for CI integrations:

{
  "summary": { "total": 4, "ERROR": 3, "WARNING": 1 },
  "findings": [
    {
      "file": "module/auth.py",
      "line": 42,
      "col": 8,
      "rule_id": "PROOFCTL-S-001",
      "severity": "ERROR",
      "message": "SQL injection via string format in .execute()",
      "hint": "Use parameterised queries: cursor.execute(sql, params)",
      "authority": "OWASP A03:2021, CWE-89"
    }
  ]
}

HTML — self-contained single-file dashboard with severity summary cards and a filterable table.

---

License

MIT