Boundaries — the external surface

Grep finds the string. This command adds direction, transport, and whether the name is a credential.

ctx-optimize boundaries

boundaries: 73 ports

CONSUMES (what this system calls out to)
  config.env     28 · 28 external · 1 SENSITIVE · 3 dynamic
      OPENROUTER_API_KEY                 INFERRED   SECRET  proof/agent/agent.mjs:L28 (+1 sites)
      CTX_OPTIMIZE_STORE                 INFERRED    internal/app/app_test.go:L49 (+3 sites)
  network.http   16 · 16 external
      api.github.com                     INFERRED    internal/app/app.go:L3149
      codeload.github.com                INFERRED    internal/app/manifests.go:L157 (+2 sites)

UNRESOLVED  3 ports carry a dynamic identifier — the SITE is certain,
            the value is not

CONSUMES vs PROVIDES. Grouped by transport. Truncation is printed.

config.env

Env names the code reads. KEY|TOKEN|SECRET|PASSWORD|_PW marked SECRET. Never the value.

network.http

Hosts and routes: api.openai.com, /orders. Direction: consumes vs provides.

process.exec

Binaries the process spawns. A variable argv is AMBIGUOUS, not missing.

Narrowing it

ctx-optimize boundaries --sensitive                    # credentials only
ctx-optimize boundaries --direction provides           # the routes we serve
ctx-optimize boundaries --transport process.exec       # what it shells out to
ctx-optimize boundaries --all                          # including dynamic identifiers
ctx-optimize boundaries --json                         # otel.* semconv keys pass through

--json keeps OpenTelemetry names (otel.server.address, otel.http.route).

A value never enters the graph. sensitive is the name matching KEY|TOKEN|SECRET|PASSWORD|_PW.

Rules are JSON on the same AST walk. Tier comes from measured recall:

recall	tier
≥ 0.95	EXTRACTED
0.70 – 0.95	INFERRED
< 0.70	AMBIGUOUS, or reject the rule

Most shipped rules were demoted by their own numbers.

Related verbs

drift

Where provides, consumes, and declared disagree. --strict is the CI gate.

services

SDK egress from the manifest: stripe, openai, firebase become ports even with no host literal.

boundaries-verify

boundaries verify re-runs each rule’s ground truth. Numbers only move up.

Authoring your own

Point your agent at the bundled boundaries-authoring reference and it will follow an eight-step measured loop — survey, propose, ground, run, measure, iterate, tier, write — emitting reviewed JSON into .ctxoptimize/boundaries.json. Repo rules merge over machine rules over the shipped defaults, by rule id, so you can narrow or replace a default without forking anything.

Caution

Two honest limits. scope says internal or says nothing. It is written only when the join actually fires — when a consumed identifier matches a provides port in the same gather. Absence means not proven internal, which is usually because the two sides are different namespaces: every shipped consumes rule on HTTP yields a host (api.openai.com) and every shipped provides rule yields a route path (/orders). There is no external value, because “we did not find it here” is not evidence that a call leaves the building. On the default rule set you will therefore see no scope at all; a repo that authors a rule sharing the provides namespace — a same-origin fetch("/orders") rule, say — gets a real internal.

And a port list is a floor, not a census: a host assembled by string concatenation is not a literal, so it is reported as AMBIGUOUS or not at all. The rules say what they miss.