bcquality/microsoft/skills/review/al-security-review.md

kind	id	version	title	description	inputs	outputs	bc-version	technologies	countries	application-area
action-skill	al-security-review	1	AL security review	Reviews AL source changes against security guidance from BCQuality.	pr-diff file-path folder-path	findings-report	all	al	w1	all

AL security review

Reviews AL source changes against the security knowledge domain in BCQuality and emits a findings report. This is a leaf action skill: it invokes no sub-skills. It is one of the skills composed by al-code-review.

An orchestrator invokes this skill with a pr-diff, file-path, or folder-path. The skill produces a single JSON document conforming to the DO output contract.

Source

Use READ's Bounded retrieval for review skills workflow with -Domain security. Consume every catalog page across enabled layers before applying this leaf's Relevance and Worklist; preserve each exact catalog path and open complete bodies only for exact paths selected by the Worklist. If the helper or prepared index is unavailable or invalid, use READ's explicit path-discovery and bounded native-read fallback.

Relevance

Apply the frontmatter matching rules defined in READ (Frontmatter matching semantics) against the task context:

• bc-version — the target BC version from the PR branch's app.json or the orchestrator-supplied version. If unavailable, the dimension is unknown.
• technologies — [al].
• countries — the countries declared in the consuming app's app.json. Default to the orchestrator's configured context; if absent, unknown.
• application-area — the union of application areas declared by the changed objects. Pass the actual set; do not substitute [all]. If the area cannot be determined from the changes, the dimension is unknown.

Discard files that are not applicable. Retain conditionally applicable files (any dimension unknown) only when the orchestrator's configuration permits them; findings derived from those files MUST have confidence no higher than medium, AND the finding's message MUST name the dimension or dimensions that were unknown.

Worklist

Narrow the relevant files to the subset that applies to the changes under review. For each relevant file, compute overlap against:

• The changed AL object names and types — especially permission sets, codeunits handling authentication or authorization, objects touching Isolated Storage, OAuth2 flows, web service endpoints, API pages, event publishers, and RecordRef helpers.
• The changed procedures and triggers, weighted toward those that call HttpClient, validate or compose URLs, write to telemetry, read or write secrets, unwrap SecretText, manipulate record-level security, expose var Boolean guard parameters, or bypass the permission model (for example, RecordRef.Open, Record.WritePermission, direct table access from a non-owning app).
• Tokens extracted from the diff that relate to security concerns (IsolatedStorage, SetEncrypted, OAuth2, SecretText, Unwrap, NonDebuggable, Password, Token, HttpClient, Uri, AreURIsHaveSameHost, IsValidURIPattern, RecordRef, RecordId, TransferFields, Codeunit.Run, Access = Internal, internalsVisibleTo, Open, IntegrationEvent, SkipValidation, HasAccess, Permission, UserSecurityId, Commit, SetFilter).

A file enters the candidate worklist when its keywords intersect the extracted tokens or its topic (derived from the index entry's path, title, and description) matches a changed object type. Read an article's full file — its ## Best Practice / ## Anti Pattern bodies — only after it makes the worklist; candidate selection uses the index alone.

Always worklist internal-access-is-not-a-security-boundary.md when changed comments or code rely on Access = Internal or internalsVisibleTo to protect a sensitive operation, or an internal OnRun codeunit performs privileged work without an independent authorization boundary. Do not flag internal used only to keep implementation details out of the supported API.

For secret values, select the most specific sink owner:

• When a Text/Code credential is declared, passed, returned, or unwrapped without a visible HTTP URI/header/body sink, use secrettext-for-credentials.md.
• When that value is interpolated into a URI, authorization header, or HTTP body and sent through HttpClient, use secrettext-with-httpclient.md as the primary finding. It supersedes the generic credential-type article at that location; keep the latter only as a supporting reference when useful.

Once the candidate worklist is known, resolve layer-precedence conflicts per READ. Drop lower-precedence files whose normative guidance (## Best Practice or ## Anti Pattern) directly contradicts a higher-precedence candidate, and record each dropped file in suppressed with reason: "layer-precedence". Files that would have been candidates but are hidden because their layer is disabled in consumer configuration are recorded with reason: "configuration". Files that never became candidates are NOT recorded in suppressed.

When the post-conflict worklist is empty because no applicable security knowledge exists, or because configuration suppressed every candidate, emit outcome: "no-knowledge". When the worklist is empty because no applicable security knowledge matched the changes, emit outcome: "completed" with an empty findings array.

Action

For each worklist entry, evaluate the diff against the file's ## Best Practice and ## Anti Pattern sections. Emit findings as follows:

• When the diff contains a clear match for an Anti Pattern, emit a finding with severity major or blocker, a message summarizing the anti-pattern, location pointing to the offending line or range, and a references entry pointing to the knowledge file. Use blocker only when the knowledge file states the anti-pattern violates a platform-level guarantee (for example, documented secret-handling rules, permission-model invariants, or data-protection requirements). When the file does not make such a claim, the ceiling is major.
• When the diff contains code that contradicts a Best Practice without being a full anti-pattern, emit minor with the same reference shape.
• Applicability alone is not a finding. Emit info only for a concrete, non-actionable observation the article explicitly defines; otherwise emit nothing when no violation is present.

Set confidence to:

• high when the detection is based on an unambiguous pattern match (identifier, syntax, object type).
• medium when detection relies on heuristics or when any frontmatter dimension was unknown.
• low when the finding is an advisory derived only from applicability.

After evaluating each worklist entry, also consider whether the diff exhibits a security defect the agent recognises from its general AL knowledge that no knowledge file in the worklist covers. Such candidates are agent findings within this skill's domain — emit them with references: [], an id slug prefixed with agent:, confidence capped at medium, severity capped at minor (agent findings are advisory and non-gating), and a message that is self-contained (describing both the issue and a concrete recommendation, since there is no knowledge-file footer for the consumer to fall back on). Hold every candidate to the precision bar in skills/do.md (Agent findings): emit only a concrete, material security defect a knowledgeable BC reviewer would agree is wrong — steelman it first and drop anything stylistic, speculative, dependent on code outside the diff, or merely a valid alternative; when in doubt, omit. The scope is strictly security; defects outside this domain belong to other leaves and MUST NOT be emitted here. Before emitting, check the worklist for a knowledge file that matches the candidate — if one exists, upgrade the candidate to a knowledge-backed finding instead. See skills/do.md for the full contract.

For every emitted finding, decide whether the fix is mechanical. A fix is mechanical when it is small, local, and unambiguous from the diff context (for example: delete unreachable lines; replace Count() > 0 with not IsEmpty(); add a missing ToolTip, OptionCaption, or DataClassification; replace a string-concatenated Error with a Label-backed call; change an over-broad permission token; or add an obvious else/guard branch). For mechanical findings, emit findings[].suggested-code with the literal replacement for the source lines indicated by location. The payload must be a verbatim replacement — no diff markers, no fences, no commentary — that the consumer can render as a one-click suggestion. When a .good.al companion exists and the diff context matches the .bad.al shape, adapt the .good.al replacement into suggested-code.

Omit suggested-code only when the appropriate fix depends on context the skill cannot determine, when multiple defensible replacements exist, or when the fix spans non-contiguous code. If a finding is mechanical-looking but you omit suggested-code, set findings[].suggested-code-omission-reason to a short explanation. See skills/do.md for the full contract.

Outcome selection:

• completed — the skill evaluated every worklist item; default when the skill finishes normally, including when the resulting findings array is empty.
• no-knowledge — no applicable security knowledge survived Source, Relevance, configuration filtering, and conflict resolution. findings is empty.
• not-applicable — the task context lacks an AL dimension (no AL changes in the diff, or technologies filter rejected the task).
• partial — a time or token budget was hit before the worklist was exhausted. summary.coverage reflects the evaluated subset; outcome-reason explains the cause.
• failed — an unrecoverable error occurred. outcome-reason is required.

Output

Output conforms to the DO output contract. Every finding this skill emits MUST set findings[].domain to "Security". A populated example:

{
  "skill": { "id": "al-security-review", "version": 1 },
  "outcome": "completed",
  "summary": {
    "counts": { "blocker": 1, "major": 0, "minor": 1, "info": 0 },
    "coverage": { "worklist-size": 2, "items-evaluated": 2 }
  },
  "findings": [
    {
      "id": "microsoft/knowledge/security/secrettext-for-credentials.md",
      "severity": "blocker",
      "message": "A bearer token is declared as a Text parameter and passed through the HTTP request path as plain text. The referenced guidance requires credentials to flow as SecretText end-to-end.",
      "location": {
        "file": "src/Integration/ApiClient.Codeunit.al",
        "line": 85,
        "range": { "start-line": 85, "end-line": 89 }
      },
      "references": [
        { "path": "microsoft/knowledge/security/secrettext-for-credentials.md" }
      ],
      "confidence": "high",
      "domain": "Security"
    },
    {
      "id": "microsoft/knowledge/security/secrets-isolated-storage.md",
      "severity": "minor",
      "message": "A setup table stores an API key in an ordinary Text field, exposing it through table reads and exports. Persist it in IsolatedStorage instead.",
      "location": {
        "file": "src/Integration/ExternalServiceSetup.Table.al",
        "line": 12
      },
      "references": [
        { "path": "microsoft/knowledge/security/secrets-isolated-storage.md" }
      ],
      "confidence": "medium",
      "domain": "Security"
    }
  ],
  "suppressed": []
}

When no applicable security knowledge is available, the report is:

{
  "skill": { "id": "al-security-review", "version": 1 },
  "outcome": "no-knowledge",
  "summary": {
    "counts": { "blocker": 0, "major": 0, "minor": 0, "info": 0 },
    "coverage": { "worklist-size": 0, "items-evaluated": 0 }
  },
  "findings": [],
  "suppressed": []
}