This comes from actually operating systems — a private cloud / homelab and an AI automation lab — where blast radius isn't a slide, it's the thing that wakes you up at 2am. The review is the same instinct, pointed at your design.

Who it's for

Who this is for

Built for people close to the code, not a procurement department.

• Builders and small teams shipping something real who want a second set of eyes before the architecture gets harder to change.
• Founders who moved fast on purpose and now want to know where the risk actually concentrates.
• Teams adding auth, payments, multi-tenancy, or AI tooling who aren't sure where the trust boundaries should sit.
• Anyone who'd rather fix a design decision now than reverse-engineer it during an incident.

Scope

What gets reviewed

A pass through the parts of a system where small design choices quietly become big operational risks.

Auth & access boundaries

Who can do what, where those decisions are actually enforced, and what happens when a credential leaks.

Secrets handling

Where credentials live, how they're injected and rotated, and what's quietly sitting in a repo or an env dump.

Deployment paths

How code reaches production, who can push it, and how much damage a bad deploy can actually do.

Data flow

Where sensitive data enters, rests, and moves — and which hops you don't actually need to keep.

Logging & auditability

Whether you could reconstruct what happened after an incident, without logging things you shouldn't.

Admin surfaces

The high-privilege panels, scripts, and side doors that rarely get the same scrutiny as the front door.

Third-party integrations

The trust you've extended to APIs, webhooks, and vendors — and what they can reach if one is compromised.

AI & tooling boundaries

Where it's relevant: what agents and AI tools can read, write, or trigger, and where a human stays in the loop.

Rollback & incident readiness

Whether you can undo a change, contain a problem, and keep the blast radius small when something goes wrong.

Deliverables

What you walk away with

Plain-language output you can act on — not a black box only I understand.

Architecture notes

A written, plain-language map of how your system fits together as I actually found it — not as the diagram claims.

Prioritized risks

The issues that matter, ordered by real impact and likelihood, instead of a generic checklist.

Suggested remediations

Concrete, proportionate fixes — what to change and why it's worth the effort.

Safe next steps

A short, sequenced plan you can act on in small validated steps, starting with the cheap high-impact wins.

Boundaries

What this is not

Being clear about the edges is part of doing this honestly.

Not a penetration test

I review design and reason about weaknesses; I don't run exploits or actively attack your live systems.

Not a compliance certification

This won't produce a SOC 2, ISO, PCI, or HIPAA attestation, and it isn't a formal audit.

Not legal advice

Nothing here is a legal opinion on your obligations, contracts, or liability.

Not a guarantee

A review surfaces blind spots and lowers risk — no review makes a system 'secure' or unbreakable.

This is a design-focused cut of the broader Security & Infrastructure Review, which also covers hosting, backups, monitoring, and day-to-day operational risk. How I handle access, secrets, and anything you share during a review is spelled out on the trust page. Prefer to start on your own? The resources page has the same thinking in self-serve form. Start with the practical security overview for the larger architecture-and-operations model.

Fit

Is this a good fit?

I'd rather be honest up front than oversell. Here's where this works well — and where it doesn't.

Good fit

• + You have a real system, or a concrete design, and want it reviewed before it's expensive to change.
• + You value blast-radius thinking and a clear, prioritized list over a vague “you should do security.”
• + You want the honest version — including the parts that are already solid.
• + You want remediations you can actually ship, not a 90-page PDF nobody reads.

Not a fit

• − You need a formal pentest, certification, or signed compliance audit — this isn't that.
• − You want a rubber stamp to tell stakeholders everything is fine.
• − The architecture can't change and you just need someone to point at later.
• − The goal is a marketing badge rather than a genuinely safer system.

Next step

Want a second set of eyes before production gets one?

Send the messy version of your architecture — a diagram, a repo, or just a description in your own words. We'll figure out whether a review is the right next step together.

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