Borehole · Project · free tier
home-assistant/core
Free reading: not for reliance
b85c1d2 · 50,000 commits · 30,360 files
Read 2026-11-03

home-assistant/core: technical due diligence, read from its repository

What Borehole read in home-assistant/core's code and history at b85c1d2: 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 provenancestrong
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturitystrong
Product & Engineering Maturitystrong
Security & Reliability Postureadequate
Observability & Operationsnot assessable
Fit with the Acquirernot assessable

What the repository says

  • Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed
  • .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md:60: states a policy on AI-generated contributions
  • AGENTS.md:54: names Open Home Foundation

Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance

strong
01.6

homeassistant/components/mqtt/config_flow.py is 5,429 lines, 57× this codebase's median file

adequate

The median source file here is 95 lines. 117 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 5,429. 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.

Evidence
homeassistant/components/mqtt/config_flow.py:1 — 5,429 lines (57× median)
homeassistant/helpers/device_registry.py:1 — 5,253 lines (55× median)
homeassistant/config_entries.py:1 — 4,474 lines (47× median)
homeassistant/components/recorder/migration.py:1 — 3,348 lines (35× median)
homeassistant/components/zwave_js/api.py:1 — 3,309 lines (34× median)

Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity

strong

No finding.

Product & Engineering Maturity

strong
04.62

Releases are cut from another branch than the one surveyed

adequate

The newest pre-release, 2026.11.0b4, is not on the branch this survey read; the newest release on it is 2026.10.4. The shipped product may differ from what this report describes. Survey the release branch too. This was read from the most recent 50,000 commits (21 Feb 2024 to 3 Nov 2026) only; older history was not read.

Evidence
tag 2026.11.0b4

Security & Reliability Posture

adequate
05.6

1 Dockerfile runs 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
05.27

The build runs third-party code it does not pin

adequate

4 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/builder.yml:58 — action pinned by tag
.github/workflows/builder.yml:63 — action pinned by tag
.github/workflows/check-requirements.md:356 — download piped into a shell
05.65

17 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 11 high or critical

adequate

The newest was published on 2026-10-29. 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 3 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 2026.10.4. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version.

Evidence
2026-10-29: GHSA-6456-4qg9-cqpj (moderate), fixed in 2026.8.0: SSRF in Service Discovery Protocol service (SSDP)
2026-09-16: GHSA-4ghv-53cq-7wp3 (moderate), fixed in 2026.2.3: Home Assistant: mDNS Server-Side Request Forgery
2026-09-16: GHSA-wx4m-69m9-gx3m (critical), fixed in 2026.7.0: Home Assistant: XSS in Statistics Graph Card
2026-07-31: GHSA-j23v-9672-677j (high), fixed in 2026.5.0: Companion app (iOS) forwards NFC/QR tag scans to Home Assistant without user confirmation, allowing silent automation execution by untrusted callers
2026-07-31: GHSA-2xqv-hwrf-983f (high), fixed in 2026.5.3: Companion app (Android) forwards NFC/QR tag scans to Home Assistant without user confirmation, allowing silent automation execution by untrusted callers

Observability & Operations

not assessable

Not rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.

Fit with the Acquirer

not assessable

Not rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.

Read more, or read your own

The full report on home-assistant/core: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.

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