fix(ci): do not persist the job token in .git/config in the public-repo guard

[yakimoto]

Why

actions/checkout without persist-credentials: false writes the job's GITHUB_TOKEN into
.git/config, where any later step — or anything those steps execute — can read it. This is the
security gate that DOWNLOADS AND EXECUTES the gitleaks binary, and the workflow's own comment
already reasons about tampered downloads ("so a tampered or MITM'd download can never execute
inside the security gate"), so the threat model is written down and only the credential half of
the mitigation is missing. Found by zizmor as warning[artipacked]: credential persistence through GitHub Actions artifacts.

Safety

Verified this job only: checks out, installs gitleaks (pinned + checksum), runs
gitleaks detect --no-git, installs ripgrep, runs content-policy.sh. permissions: contents: read. Nothing pushes, calls gh, or reads GITHUB_TOKEN/GH_TOKEN, so the token was never needed
in .git/config in the first place.

Refs wave-av/claude-workstation#1870.

---

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between b1008d5 and db2fb6e.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• .github/workflows/public-repo-guard.yml

---

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[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Approved db2fb6e

This change adds persist-credentials: false to the checkout step in a GitHub Actions workflow, which is a standard security hardening practice. It's a minor CI configuration tweak with no production impact, and the author owns this workflow file.

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[devin-ai-integration]

✅ Devin Review: No Issues Found

Devin Review analyzed this PR and found no bugs or issues to report.

[qodo-code-review]

PR Summary by Qodo

CI: disable credential persistence in public-repo guard checkout

🐞 Bug fix ⚙️ Configuration changes 🕐 Less than 5 minutes

AI Description

• Disable credential persistence during checkout to avoid storing GITHUB_TOKEN in .git/config
• Reduce token exposure for later steps that download and execute pinned tooling
• Keep workflow behavior unchanged (token not needed for this job)

Diagram

graph TD
  A["public-repo-guard job"] --> B["actions/checkout"] --> C["Download gitleaks"] --> D["Run gitleaks (--no-git)"] --> E["Policy scan script"]
  B --> F[".git/config"]

  subgraph Legend
    direction LR
    _job["Job/Step"] ~~~ _file[("File")]
  end

Loading

High-Level Assessment

The following are alternative approaches to this PR:

1. Post-checkout credential scrubbing

• ➕ Works even if some steps/tools require persisted credentials briefly
• ➕ Can be added without changing checkout inputs in older workflows
• ➖ Easy to get wrong (multiple config locations/headers)
• ➖ Still leaves a time window where later steps could read the token
• ➖ More steps and maintenance than a single checkout option

2. Use a dedicated minimal token or unauthenticated checkout

• ➕ Further reduces blast radius vs default GITHUB_TOKEN
• ➕ Aligns with least-privilege even if credentials were accidentally persisted
• ➖ May break forks/rate limits or private dependencies
• ➖ More setup complexity; not needed if repo access is already read-only and credentials aren’t persisted

Recommendation: Keep the current approach (persist-credentials: false). It is the simplest and most robust mitigation: it prevents the token from ever being written into .git/config, eliminating the exposure window before running downloaded tooling.

Files changed (1) +2 / -0

Other (1) +2 / -0

public-repo-guard.ymlDisable persist-credentials for checkout in security gate job +2/-0

Disable persist-credentials for checkout in security gate job

• Adds 'persist-credentials: false' to the 'actions/checkout' step so the job token is not written into '.git/config'. This reduces the risk of token exfiltration by later workflow steps or any executed tooling.

.github/workflows/public-repo-guard.yml

[qodo-code-review]

Code Review by Qodo

🐞 Bugs (0) 📘 Rule violations (0) 📎 Requirement gaps (0)

Great, no issues found!

Qodo reviewed your code and found no material issues that require review

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[qodo-code-review]

Qodo Fixer

No findings are available for this PR yet. Findings appear here once Qodo has reviewed the PR.

[cubic-dev-ai]

No issues found across 1 file

Confidence score: 5/5

• Automated review surfaced no issues in the provided summaries.
• No files require special attention.

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[yakimoto]

This PR is redundant with #41 (chore/guard-canonical-sync), which is already open and already contains this exact change.

Evidence — #41's diff to .github/workflows/public-repo-guard.yml includes:

+          # tree. Nothing here pushes -- the scan is `--no-git` over the working tree --
+          # so no step needs authenticated Git; drop it. (zizmor: artipacked)
+          persist-credentials: false

#41 is also broader than this PR: it syncs the whole vendored public-repo-guard trio to
the canonical source (wave-foundation/scaffolder/public-repo-guard) byte-for-byte, verified by
git blob SHA, rather than adding this one line in isolation.

Closing as redundant. This duplicate exists because the fan-out that opened this PR
(refs claude-workstation#1870) did not check for in-flight PRs touching the same file before
going out — #41 was already open. Merge #41 instead.