Supply-chain hardening for the CI pipeline. 23 workflow files
modified, 59 mutable-tag refs replaced with commit SHAs.
The risk
Every `uses:` reference in .github/workflows/*.yml was pinned to a
mutable tag (e.g., `actions/checkout@v4`). A maintainer of an
action — or a compromised maintainer account — can repoint that
tag to malicious code, and our pipelines silently pull it on the
next run. The tj-actions/changed-files compromise of March 2025 is
the canonical example: maintainer credential leak, attacker
repointed several `@v<N>` tags to a payload that exfiltrated
repository secrets. Repos that pinned to SHAs were unaffected.
The fix
Replace each `@v<N>` with `@<commit-sha> # v<N>`. The trailing
comment preserves human readability ("ah, this is v4"); the SHA
makes the reference immutable.
Actions covered (10 distinct):
actions/{checkout,setup-go,setup-python,setup-node,upload-artifact,github-script}
docker/{login-action,setup-buildx-action,build-push-action}
github/codeql-action/{init,autobuild,analyze}
dorny/paths-filter
imjasonh/setup-crane
pnpm/action-setup (already pinned in molecule-app, listed here for completeness)
Excluded:
Molecule-AI/molecule-ci/.github/workflows/disable-auto-merge-on-push.yml@main
— internal org reusable workflow; we control its repo, threat model
is different from third-party actions. Conventional to pin to @main
rather than SHA for internal reusables.
The maintenance cost
SHA pinning means upstream fixes require manual SHA bumps. Without
automation, pinned SHAs go stale. So this PR also enables Dependabot
across four ecosystems:
- github-actions (workflows)
- gomod (workspace-server)
- npm (canvas)
- pip (workspace runtime requirements)
Weekly cadence — the supply-chain attack window is "minutes between
repoint and pull"; weekly auto-bumps don't help with zero-days
regardless. The point is to pull in non-zero-day fixes without
operator effort.
Aligns with user-stated principle: "long-term, robust, fully-
automated, eliminate human error."
Companion PR: Molecule-AI/molecule-controlplane#308 (same pattern,
smaller surface).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Pre-merge guard against the deadlock pattern that hit twice today:
adding a workflow's check to required_status_checks while the workflow
itself doesn't have a `merge_group:` trigger → merge queue stalls
forever in AWAITING_CHECKS because the required check can't fire on
gh-readonly-queue/* refs.
Each time today this happened it cost 30-60min of debug + a hot-fix PR
+ temporary removal of the required check. This workflow runs on every
PR touching .github/workflows/ and on push to staging/main, listing
required checks for staging and verifying each one's owning workflow
declares merge_group.
Self-listens on merge_group so the linter passes its own queue runs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
