Reporting and Disclosure

Author: Ryan Basden

Research decision and learning outcome

Decide whether the evidence supports a private report, requires more work or refutes the claim.
Produce a useful draft only when justified. A supported hold or rejection is a successful outcome.
Help a maintainer reproduce behavior, understand demonstrated impact and assess a fix.
An agent drafts; a human judges and sends. No exercise sends or publishes anything.

Baseline: an ordinary agent assessment and draft from the same complete fieldwork notes and source records.
Add the explicit readiness, verification and channel workflow—not extra evidence or withheld caveats.
Keep model, task, evidence access, permissions and budget the same. Submission tools remain unavailable in both conditions.
Use synthetic or reviewed public material, separate expected decisions, and fresh sessions. Do not use confidential client findings.

Predict report, hold or refute. Preserve the baseline decision and its evidence.
Repeat through the workflow below; inspect factual support rather than polish or length.
Change one material fact, then reassess whether a report is still justified.
This comparison is planned; no controlled workflow-benefit result is claimed.

Confidence means how well the claim survives questions; severity means demonstrated impact.
High: mechanism/callers, reproduction/control, reachability and impact established.
Medium: solid reproduction with only a nonmaterial inference, stated clearly.
Blocked: a missing answer could change the claim; save the question and next step instead of a report.
Read full functions/callers; test a one-variable control. Record actual outcomes and attacker capabilities.
Name the expected objection and weakest link. Holds and refuted results are useful too.

Authorized live checks immediately before drafting: supported release, exact source, reproduction and realistic configuration.
Distinguish fork from upstream; do not invent affected ranges or patched versions.
Check duplicates, severity and proposed remediation.
Use upstream’s policy/required fields and confirmed private channel; a fork’s policy or signed-out redirect is insufficient.
No route/network access: hold and ask, not a public fallback or policy bypass.
Save dates/sources; completed checkboxes do not prove work occurred.

One target/finding, tested version, evidence, limits and observed impact.
Separate observed facts, inferences and unanswered questions.
Severity/vector or unscored reason; applicable CWE or a reason why none fits.
Operator-supplied identity/contact, policy, coordination window, credit and CVE stance; ask rather than invent.
Keep raw sensitive evidence private and review anything shared.

For an advisory form: separate local fenced fields for title, severity, weaknesses, affected versions, confirmed fixes/unknown and description.
Fences must contain any inner reproduction fences safely.
Description outline:
- Affected version; who can do what to whom and under which conditions.
- Source/callers and the failed boundary.
- Reproduction, expected/actual outcomes and control.
- Observed impact, preconditions, limits and weakest link.
- Recovery if applicable; remediation options and what was actually tested.
- Post-fix attack/control/legitimate-use checks.
- Related advisory distinction if needed.
- Supplied coordination, credit and CVE agreements.
Preserve material caveats and a protected limitation sentence.
No bundled independent findings; no renderer/submission tool supplied here.

Removable sender notes: route/policy/date, evidence/release/lines, confidence, objections and severity alternatives.
Review actual evidence, attribution, impact, redaction and policy—not only a checklist or hash.
Human approval is not automatic submission; drafting agents get no send/publication tools.

Missing control: a plausible mechanism is not a complete reproduction.
Fixed current release: an old observation does not establish a current affected version.
Fork policy, unknown route, missing values or changed evidence: stop rather than invent support or use a public fallback.
Score readiness decisions, affected-version accuracy, reproduction/control detail, supported impact, redaction and a usable maintainer handoff.
Count unsupported claims and invented agreements as errors; do not reward a polished but unjustified report.
Record calls, elapsed time, available token/cache usage and human review effort. A short direct draft may be enough for a complete, simple case.
A larger workflow adds maintenance and can still miss a material assumption. Check actual evidence, not only its checklist.

Give an unfamiliar case a report/hold/refute decision, supporting evidence, a limitation and one next action.
Draft only if the case supports it. Explain which new fact would change a hold or rejection.
Further tests need authorization. Synthetic material is training-only / do not submit; offline examples are not live verification.
Verify expected decisions independently and preserve paired runs before claiming workflow or learner benefit.

After an actual human send, record the supplied date/channel, agreed window, replies and next action privately.
Keep prior agreements. Draft creation starts no clock; window expiry does not trigger publication.