Read 2026-10-04
windmill-labs/windmill: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in windmill-labs/windmill's code and history at 7664001: 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.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | strong |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongbackend/windmill-api-workspaces/src/workspaces.rs is 14,679 lines, 225× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 65 lines. 213 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 14,679. 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.
backend/windmill-api-workspaces/src/workspaces.rs:1 — 14,679 lines (225× median) |
backend/windmill-api/src/jobs.rs:1 — 12,279 lines (188× median) |
backend/windmill-runtime-nativets/src/windmill-client.js:1 — 10,372 lines (159× median) |
frontend/tailwindClasses.js:1 — 8,978 lines (138× median) |
frontend/src/lib/components/copilot/chat/global/core.ts:1 — 8,832 lines (135× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongTests are retried until they pass
adequateThe suite is configured to retry failing tests (frontend/playwright.config.ts). A retry turns a flaky test green without saying why it failed, so a green build means the tests passed eventually. Ask how many retries a typical run needs, and which tests need them.
frontend/playwright.config.ts:22 — test retry |
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequate107 direct dependencies in a single manifest
adequatefrontend/package.json declares 107 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.
frontend/package.json — 107 declared |
cli/package.json — 31 declared |
ai_evals/package.json — 5 declared |
multiplayer/package.json — 5 declared |
Node.js 20 is past end of life
adequateThe code is pinned to Node.js 20 (end of life 2026-04-30). None of these receives security fixes any more; the first stopped on 2026-04-30. Moving off an unsupported runtime is rarely a one-line change, so a buyer should ask whether the upgrade is planned and what it touches.
docker/RHEL8/Dockerfile — Node.js 20, end of life 2026-04-30 |
17% of bug fixes add or change a test
adequateOf 2870 fixes in the last 24 months, 483 touched a test. A fix without the test that would have caught the bug can quietly come back, and the suite never learns from what went wrong.
| 483 of 2870 |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate1 credential-shaped string in the tree sit in tests, examples, documentation or local development settings
adequateStrings shaped like credentials appear only where fakes are usual: test fixtures, examples, documentation, placeholders and local stacks. They are almost always fakes. Ask someone to confirm that none of them works anywhere, because a real key in a development file is still a real key. 7 other matchs set aside: expired tokens, licence tokens a vendor verifies with a public key, or placeholder text where a key would go. None grants access to anything.
| JWT, where fakes are usual |
4 Dockerfiles run the application as root
adequateNo 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.
Dockerfile — runs as root |
debugger/Dockerfile — runs as root |
docker/RHEL8/Dockerfile — runs as root |
docker/RHEL9/Dockerfile — runs as root |
2 environment files are committed
adequate.env, frontend/.env are tracked in git. Environment files are where credentials usually live, and committing one usually means nobody decided how secrets reach the running application. Whatever is in it is in the history for good. Check 05.1 says whether it holds anything credential-shaped.
.env — committed environment file |
frontend/.env — committed environment file |
The build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate25 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; 8 steps pipe 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.
.github/workflows/ai-agent-tests.yml:57 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/ai-agent-tests.yml:62 — action pinned by tag |
Dockerfile:245 — download piped into a shell |
2 SQL statements built from strings
adequate2 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.
python-client/wmill/wmill/client.py:2581 — SQL built from a string |
python-client/wmill/wmill/client.py:2585 — SQL built from a string |
5 shell commands built from strings
adequate5 places run a command through a shell (`shell=True`, `os.system`, `exec` with a template) rather than passing arguments. Where any part comes from outside, it is command injection. Ask where each one's input comes from.
backend/overwrite_migrations.py:17 — command run through a shell |
backend/overwrite_migrations.py:23 — command run through a shell |
cli/src/commands/app/new.ts:844 — command run through a shell |
4 deserialisers that can run code
adequate4 places read data with a deserialiser that executes what it reads (`yaml.load` without a safe loader, pickle). That is safe on data the system wrote itself and remote code execution on anything else. Ask where each one's input comes from.
frontend/src/lib/components/copilot/prompts/yaml2json.py:4 — code-executing deserialiser |
frontend/src/lib/components/copilot/prompts/yaml2json.py:9 — code-executing deserialiser |
frontend/src/lib/components/copilot/prompts/yaml2json.py:14 — code-executing deserialiser |
49 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 4 high or critical in what ships
adequate49 of 2,342 locked dependencies match 65 published advisories in OSV, 11 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.
python-client/wmill/uv.lock — anyio 4.12.1: GHSA-82r6-8w77-94w6 (critical), fixed in 4.14.2 |
frontend/package-lock.json — devalue 5.9.2: GHSA-j22f-vq7h-c4qm (high), fixed in 5.9.3 |
backend/Cargo.lock — aws-smithy-json 0.61.9: GHSA-8ffr-xgwf-xj56 (high), fixed in 0.62.7 |
1 workload setting give a container the host
adequate1 places in the deployment configuration run a container privileged or in the host's network, process or IPC namespace. A compromise of that container is a compromise of the machine, and most acquirers' security reviews block it. Node agents (network, storage, monitoring) are excluded.
docker-compose.yml:78 — privileged or host namespace |
66 places insert HTML from a variable without sanitising it
adequate66 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.
frontend/src/lib/components/AppConnectInner.svelte:1346 — HTML from a variable |
frontend/src/lib/components/ContentSearchInner.svelte:266 — HTML from a variable |
frontend/src/lib/components/ContentSearchInner.svelte:302 — HTML from a variable |
11 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 5 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-09-10. 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 1.820.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version.
| 2026-09-10: GHSA-2jfj-x8j7-7mfh (high), fixed in 1.782.0: Under nsjail security sandboxing, DuckDB scripts can escape the fs sandbox and poison shared worker caches for cross-workspace RCE |
| 2026-08-11: CVE-2026-72539 (moderate): An information disclosure vulnerability in Windmill Labs Windmill through 1.783.0 allows any authenticated workspace member to read legacy ownerless draft scrip |
| 2026-08-11: CVE-2026-72541 (moderate): A missing authorization vulnerability in Windmill Labs Windmill through 1.783.0 allows any authenticated workspace member to overwrite any resource type schema |
| 2026-08-11: CVE-2026-72542 (moderate): A missing authorization vulnerability in Windmill Labs Windmill through 1.783.0 allows authenticated operators to write job progress and read job metrics for an |
| 2026-06-03: GHSA-2ppx-66jv-wpw5 (low), fixed in 1.715.0: Resource-scoped API tokens can read script contents outside their allowed path via scripts/list_search |
Observability & Operations
strongNo error reporter is wired in
adequateNothing in the service initialises an error reporter (Sentry, Rollbar, Bugsnag, Honeybadger or an APM agent). An exception in production reaches a person only if someone is reading the logs, which usually means a customer reports it first.
| no error reporter initialised |
1 of 4 deployed images carry no version, or `latest`
adequate1 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.
docker-compose.yml:185 — image without a version |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
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