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.

---

---

Note

Low Risk
Single workflow hardening with no behavior change to scans; reduces credential exposure in the security gate job.

Overview
Hardens the public-repo-guard workflow by configuring actions/checkout with persist-credentials: false, so the job’s GITHUB_TOKEN is not stored in .git/config.

That matters because later steps install and run a pinned gitleaks binary and run content-policy.sh; without this flag, anything in those steps (or code they execute) could read the token from git config even though the job only needs contents: read and never uses gh or pushes.

^{Reviewed by Cursor Bugbot for commit 9f74452. Configure here.}

Note

Stop persisting the job token in .git/config in the public-repo guard CI workflow

Sets persist-credentials: false on the actions/checkout step in public-repo-guard.yml so the GitHub job token is not written to the local git config during the workflow run.

^{Macroscope summarized 9f74452.}

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Review details

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 3f87432 and 9f74452.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

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

---

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[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Approved 9f74452

This is a minimal CI security hardening change that adds persist-credentials: false to prevent the job token from being persisted in git config. The change is 2 lines, does not affect application runtime, 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 for public-repo guard checkout

🐞 Bug fix ⚙️ Configuration changes 🕐 Less than 10 minutes

AI Description

• Prevent actions/checkout from writing the job token into .git/config.
• Reduce token exposure in a job that downloads and executes third-party binaries.

Diagram

graph TD
  A(["GitHub Actions job"]) --> B["actions/checkout"] --> C[(".git/config")]
  B --> D["later steps"] --> E["download + run gitleaks"]
  C -. "before: token persisted" .-> D
  B -. "after: persist-credentials=false" .-> C
  subgraph Legend
    direction LR
    _job(["Workflow/job"]) ~~~ _step["Action/step"] ~~~ _cfg[("Git config")]
  end

Loading

High-Level Assessment

The following are alternative approaches to this PR:

1. Post-checkout credential scrubbing

• ➕ Works even if a future change forgets persist-credentials: false on checkout
• ➕ Can remove other accidental credential helpers/config entries
• ➖ Leaves a window where subsequent steps could read .git/config before scrubbing runs
• ➖ More moving parts; easier to regress with step reordering

2. Use a separate checkout strategy (e.g., archive download)

• ➕ Avoids git credential plumbing entirely for read-only jobs
• ➖ More complex (must ensure correct refs/submodules, and handle tooling expectations)
• ➖ Likely unnecessary given built-in persist-credentials: false support

Recommendation: Keep the current approach (persist-credentials: false) as the primary mitigation: it is the simplest, least error-prone way to prevent the job token from being written to .git/config while preserving normal checkout behavior. Consider adding post-checkout scrubbing only if future workflow edits introduce additional git operations or untrusted steps early in the job.

Files changed (1) +2 / -0

Other (1) +2 / -0

public-repo-guard.ymlDisable credential persistence on checkout +2/-0

Disable credential persistence on checkout

• Adds 'persist-credentials: false' to the 'actions/checkout' step so the job’s GitHub token is not stored in '.git/config' for subsequent steps to access.

.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.

_{Re-trigger cubic}

[yakimoto]

This PR is redundant with #19 (chore/guard-canonical-sync), which is already open and already contains this exact change.

Evidence — #19'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

#19 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 — #19 was already open. Merge #19 instead.