Focus Areas¶

Noxaudit audits your codebase through 7 specialized focus areas. Each has its own prompt, file patterns, and severity guidelines.

Overview¶

Security¶

Prompt focus: Secrets & credentials, injection & input handling, authentication & authorization, configuration & infrastructure, fail-open patterns, data exposure.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Exploitable now: leaked secrets, SQL/command injection, broken auth, SSRF
• MEDIUM — Requires specific conditions: missing rate limiting, overly permissive CORS, partial input validation
• LOW — Defense-in-depth: missing security headers, verbose error messages, no request signing

File patterns: All source files, config files, environment templates.

Testing¶

Prompt focus: Missing coverage for critical paths (auth, payments, data mutations), edge case gaps, test quality issues (flaky tests, meaningless assertions), test maintenance.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Critical path with zero test coverage (auth, payments, data mutations)
• MEDIUM — Feature with tests but missing important edge cases
• LOW — Test quality issues (naming, organization, minor gaps)

File patterns: Test files, source files being tested.

Patterns¶

Prompt focus: Architectural consistency, error handling patterns, naming & structure conventions, code duplication & abstraction opportunities.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Inconsistency that could cause bugs (mixed error handling, conflicting patterns)
• MEDIUM — Inconsistency that hurts maintainability (naming drift, structural divergence)
• LOW — Style or organizational suggestions

File patterns: All source files.

Hygiene¶

Prompt focus: Dead code & orphaned files, stale configuration, code debris (commented-out code, unresolved TODOs), unnecessary artifacts.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Dead code that could mislead or cause bugs if accidentally activated
• MEDIUM — Orphaned files, stale config, significant commented-out code
• LOW — Minor cleanup (old TODOs, small commented blocks)

File patterns: All source files, config files.

Docs¶

Prompt focus: README instructions that would fail if followed, code comments and docstrings that contradict the code, cross-reference validation, accuracy of API documentation.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Docs that would cause users to fail (wrong install commands, incorrect API usage)
• MEDIUM — Stale comments or docstrings that mislead developers
• LOW — Minor inaccuracies, formatting issues

File patterns: Markdown files, source files with docstrings.

Dependencies¶

Prompt focus: Known vulnerabilities & supply chain risk, phantom/dead dependencies in manifests, version management & lock file consistency, dependency weight & redundancy.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Known vulnerability in a production dependency
• MEDIUM — Outdated dependency with available security patches, phantom dependency
• LOW — Minor version behind, dev dependency issues

File patterns: Package manifests (package.json, pyproject.toml, Gemfile, etc.), lock files.

Performance¶

Prompt focus: Database & query patterns (N+1 queries, missing indexes), async & concurrency issues, memory & resource leaks, frontend & asset optimization, build & deploy performance.

Severity guide:

• HIGH — Performance issue affecting production (N+1 in hot path, memory leak, unbounded queries)
• MEDIUM — Inefficiency that scales poorly (missing pagination, sequential where parallel works)
• LOW — Optimization opportunity (unnecessary re-renders, oversized bundles)

File patterns: All source files, database migrations, build configs.

Running Focus Areas¶

# Single focus area
noxaudit run --focus security

# Multiple areas in one API call (files deduplicated)
noxaudit run --focus security,performance

# All 7 areas at once (default when no --focus specified)
noxaudit run --focus all
noxaudit run

When multiple focus areas run together, source files are gathered and deduplicated across all areas, then sent in a single API call. This saves ~80% on input tokens compared to running each separately.