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appsmithorg/appsmith
Free reading: not for reliance
b847309 · 20,585 commits · 13,883 files
Read 2026-10-22

appsmithorg/appsmith: technical due diligence, read from its repository

What Borehole read in appsmithorg/appsmith's code and history at b847309: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.

DimensionRating
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenanceadequate
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturitystrong
Product & Engineering Maturityadequate
Security & Reliability Postureadequate
Observability & Operationsadequate
Fit with the Acquirernot assessable

What the repository says

  • Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed
  • app/client/packages/mcp/src/ee/extensions/api.ts: 305 files are named as enterprise-edition code

Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance

adequate
01.6

app/client/src/components/editorComponents/PartialImportExport/PartialExportModal/unitTestUtils.ts is 20,770 lines, 391× this codebase's median file

adequate

The median source file here is 53 lines. 93 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 20,770. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.

01.25

1 base image floats: no version, or `latest`

adequate

1 of 6 `FROM` lines in product Dockerfiles name an image without a version, or with `latest`. Each build pulls whatever the registry serves that day, so the image that ships can change without a commit, and last month's build cannot be reproduced. Pin a version, or a digest.

Evidence
deploy/heroku/Dockerfile:2 — base image without a version

Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity

strong

No finding.

Product & Engineering Maturity

adequate
04.3

198 direct dependencies in a single manifest

adequate

app/client/package.json declares 198 direct dependencies. Each one is a maintenance obligation, a supply-chain surface and a potential licence question that transfers with the asset. The count says nothing about whether any given dependency was a good choice; it says how many such choices a buyer inherits.

04.14

4 jobs are each done by more than one library

adequate

Within a single package: HTTP clients: axios, got, node-fetch; dates: date-fns, dayjs, moment; forms: react-hook-form, redux-form; utility belts: lodash, underscore. Each duplicate is bundle size, two ways of doing the same thing in one codebase, and two upgrade paths to maintain. It is usually the residue of a migration that stopped halfway.

Evidence
app/client/package.json — several libraries per job
app/client/packages/ast/package.json — several libraries per job
04.38

26 files still carry code deprecated more than two years ago

adequate

26 files were marked deprecated over two years ago and still are, the oldest since Dec 2021. A deprecation is a promise to remove. Ask what still depends on these, and whether removing them is scheduled.

04.62

Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed

adequate

The newest release, v2.5.1, is not on the branch this survey read; the newest release on it is v1.43. The shipped product may differ from what this report describes. Survey the release branch too.

Evidence
tag v2.5.1

Security & Reliability Posture

adequate
05.6

2 Dockerfiles run the application as root

adequate

No USER instruction switches away from root, so the process runs with full privileges inside the container. It is a one-line fix and an ordinary expectation, which is why its absence is worth asking about: it usually says more about whether anyone has reviewed the deployment than about this container specifically.

Evidence
Dockerfile — runs as root
deploy/heroku/Dockerfile — runs as root
05.27

The build runs third-party code it does not pin

adequate

18 third-party CI actions are referenced by a tag or branch rather than a commit, so they run whatever that tag points to on the day; 1 step pipes a download straight into a shell. Tags have been moved to malicious commits in real supply-chain attacks, and a piped script is whatever the server returns that minute. Pinning to a commit is the fix, and it is small.

Evidence
.github/workflows/ad-hoc-docker-image.yml:131 — action pinned by tag
.github/workflows/ad-hoc-docker-image.yml:134 — action pinned by tag
deploy/digital_ocean/scripts/01-packages.sh:13 — download piped into a shell
05.20

13 SQL statements built from strings

adequate

13 places in product code build SQL by formatting or joining strings rather than passing parameters. In each, what the code shows going in is a table or column name, a constant, or something the line does not show, not a request's value. Ask whether any value reaches these strings, rather than a parameter.

05.26

31 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 18 high or critical

adequate

31 of 3,331 locked dependencies match 43 published advisories in OSV, 18 of them rated high or critical. A lockfile says which version is installed, not whether the flawed code is reachable from this product, so each needs a look. Most are fixed by an upgrade, and the advisory names the version. This lockfile pins development tools alongside what ships and does not say which is which, so some of these may never reach a user.

Evidence
app/client/yarn.lock — @storybook/core 8.2.7: GHSA-f2ph-cmg5-wxc8 (critical), fixed in 8.6.19
app/client/yarn.lock — storybook 8.2.7: GHSA-f2ph-cmg5-wxc8 (critical), fixed in 8.6.19
app/client/yarn.lock — braces 3.0.3: GHSA-vfj7-8cjw-p6xm (high)
05.48

24 places insert HTML from a variable without sanitising it

adequate

24 places set HTML from a value that is neither a literal nor passed through a sanitiser. Where the value can come from a user, that is stored cross-site scripting, and it is the first thing a buyer's security review looks for in a frontend.

05.49

The production build publishes source maps

adequate

The build configuration emits source maps for production, so the original source, with its comments and structure, is downloadable by every visitor. Upload them to an error tracker and keep them off the public server instead.

Evidence
app/client/packages/ast/rollup.config.js:14 — source maps in a production build
app/client/packages/design-system/widgets/rollup.config.js:32 — source maps in a production build
app/client/packages/dsl/rollup.config.js:15 — source maps in a production build
05.61

305 files are named as enterprise-edition code

adequate

Files named `.ee.` are, by the common open-core convention, the paid edition's code, usually under a licence that is not open source even where the rest is. What the buyer may do with each part differs.

05.65

49 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 27 high or critical

adequate

The newest was published on 2026-10-06. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. Whether 46 of them are fixed in the code you ship could not be told from this history: its version is only known to be at least 1.43.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version. GHSA-xfc5-796c-7hr9 (moderate), CVE-2026-7299 (moderate), GHSA-7hf5-mc28-xmcv (critical) are fixed in the surveyed commit; which release carries them cannot be told from this history, which does not place the release users run. Answer lives in: the version you run.

Evidence
2026-10-06: GHSA-cfv8-wh7w-xx73 (moderate), fixed in 2.3: Git auto-commit progress endpoint discloses branch and progress state without checking caller authorization
2026-10-06: GHSA-fqwc-g9wm-5895 (critical), fixed in 2.3: Arbitrary file read and write via symlinks in Git import
2026-10-06: GHSA-frqc-9x9h-fv9v (moderate), fixed in 2.2: Cross-site scripting via CSS tokens in custom widgets
2026-09-29: GHSA-rf99-rc2w-vh94 (moderate), fixed in 2.4: MongoDB root credentials exposed via the admin environment settings endpoint
2026-09-17: GHSA-h5qf-426x-5mv5 (high), fixed in 2.3: Unauthorized workspace membership changes via incomplete authorization checks

Observability & Operations

adequate
06.2

No structured logging library is in use

adequate

Nothing references a structured logging library. Logs that are written to be read by a person are not searchable by a machine, which means incident response here is proportional to how well someone remembers the codebase rather than to what the tooling can find.

Evidence
searched 10,172 files for 10 structured logging libraries; 0 matched
06.18

1 of 1 deployed images carry no version, or `latest`

adequate

1 images in the deployment configuration are named without a version or as `latest`. A redeploy can change the software without a commit, a rollback has nothing to roll back to, and nobody can say from the repository what is running.

Evidence
deploy/helm/templates/autoupdate.yaml:22 — image without a version
06.14

Readiness and liveness probes are identical in 1 of 1 workloads

adequate

Both probes call the same endpoint. When a dependency slows down, the liveness probe fails with the readiness probe, so the platform restarts pods that only needed taking out of rotation, and a partial outage becomes a full one. Liveness should ask whether the process is alive; readiness whether it can serve.

Evidence
deploy/helm/templates/deployment.yaml — same probe endpoint twice

Fit with the Acquirer

not assessable

Not rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.

Read more, or read your own

The full report on appsmithorg/appsmith: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.

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