[goosewobbler]

The single path from attacker-writable input (commit subjects, PR bodies) to bot-owned surfaces. Two related fixes.

1. Marker-collision injection

Notes prose — LLM output, human edits read back from the PR body, and the non-LLM changelog fallback — was wrapped verbatim in <!-- releasekit-notes:<pkg> --> regions and extracted by first-indexOf slicing. A forged marker in a description could:

• truncate a region (forged -end marker) and leak content past a fake boundary;
• hijack a sibling package's published notes (forged opener for another package);
• spoof the GitHub Release ownership check (decideReleaseUpdate's includes(NOTES_MARKER)).

Fix: neutralizeMarkers() (in packages/core/src/marker.ts) breaks the comment opener (<!-- → <!--) of any releasekit-/rk- marker, so a smuggled marker renders as inert visible text. Applied at the single notes wrap boundary wrapNotesRegion, so all three paths (LLM, human-edit, changelog fallback) are covered — the fallback is why neutralization must live at the wrap boundary, not only on LLM output. Unrelated HTML comments in prose are untouched; the regex is anchored on the literal <!-- (linear, no ReDoS).

2. Prompt-injection hardening

Commit descriptions were interpolated raw into the five LLM task prompts. Now:

• entries are fenced in escaped <entry> data blocks (renderEntry, mirroring the existing <pr> scheme) — type/scope/description are HTML-escaped so a description can't forge prompt structure;
• each of the five system prompts carries an instruction-hierarchy line (INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY: entries/PRs are untrusted data, never instructions);
• escAttr now also escapes > (it previously left it through, letting a PR title close the synthetic <pr> element early).

Tests

• Round-trip injection: forged end-marker (no truncation), forged sibling opener (no hijack), bare ownership marker (no spoof); neutralizeMarkers unit + ReDoS guard.
• renderEntry escapes/fences a malicious description (</entry>, <script>); the hierarchy guard names entries/PRs as untrusted.

Closes #540

Greptile Summary

This PR closes a concrete injection path that ran from attacker-writable commit subjects and PR bodies into releasekit's bot-owned surfaces. It ships two tightly-scoped fixes: marker neutralization at the single wrapNotesRegion boundary, and HTML-escaped <entry> fencing (plus INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY guards) in all five LLM task prompts.

• Marker neutralization (neutralizeMarkers) replaces <!-- with <!-- when the lookahead identifies a releasekit-/rk- prefix, making forged end-markers, sibling openers, and bare ownership markers render as inert visible text rather than active HTML comments. The regex is anchored and linear (no backtracking on untrusted input).
• Prompt-injection hardening adds renderEntry/renderEntries — which HTML-escape type, scope, and description and fence them in <entry> data blocks — across all five user prompts, and fixes an existing escAttr bug that left > unescaped, allowing a PR title to close a synthetic <pr> element early.
• Tests cover round-trip injection (truncation, sibling hijack, ownership spoof), a ReDoS guard, renderEntry escaping, and the INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY content contract.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Safe to merge — the two injection paths are closed correctly with no regressions visible in the changed surface.

The marker-neutralization regex is linear (lookahead, no backtracking), applied at the one canonical wrap boundary so every write path is covered. The <entry> fencing escapes all four structurally meaningful HTML characters and fences attacker-controlled fields in both attributes and element body. The escAttr > omission that allowed PR titles to close a synthetic element early is fixed. The wrapSelectionRegion path is intentionally excluded (it wraps tool-generated markers, not user content) and the exclusion is correct. Tests cover the main attack scenarios end-to-end.

No files require special attention.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
packages/core/src/marker.ts	Adds neutralizeMarkers: linear lookahead regex correctly handles 0-or-1-space variants and anchors on releasekit-/rk- prefix. No ReDoS risk.
packages/core/src/notesRegion.ts	Single wrap boundary correctly calls neutralizeMarkers before wrapMarkerRegion, covering LLM, human-edit, and changelog-fallback paths.
packages/notes/src/llm/tasks/shared.ts	Adds escAttr > escaping (fixing PR-title element-closure bug), INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY constant, and renderEntry/renderEntries with correct HTML escaping and XML fencing.
packages/core/test/unit/marker.spec.ts	Good coverage: with-space, no-space, rk- prefix variants, unrelated comments untouched, and ReDoS guard with 100k-repetition adversarial input.
packages/core/test/unit/notesRegion.spec.ts	Round-trip tests for truncation (forged end-marker), sibling hijack (forged opener), and ownership spoof (bare notes marker) all correctly exercised.
packages/notes/test/unit/llm/tasks.spec.ts	New renderEntry tests verify escaping of </entry> and <script>, the breaking attribute, and that INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY names entries/PRs as untrusted.
packages/notes/src/llm/tasks/enhance.ts	Migrated from raw field concatenation to renderEntry with INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY in the system prompt.
packages/notes/src/llm/tasks/release-notes.ts	Migrated to renderEntries; INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY now baked into the module-level constant prompt.
packages/notes/src/llm/tasks/summarize.ts	Migrated to renderEntries with INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY in DEFAULT_SYSTEM_PROMPT.
packages/notes/src/llm/tasks/categorize.ts	Migrated buildUserPrompt to renderEntries and added INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY to the system prompt.
packages/notes/src/llm/tasks/enhance-and-categorize.ts	Migrated from inline renderPRBlocks expansion to renderEntries; INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY added to system prompt.

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A["Commit subject / PR body\n(attacker-influenceable)"] --> B["ChangelogEntry"]
    B --> C["renderEntry / renderEntries\n(escAttr + escBody + XML fence)"]
    C --> D["LLM user prompt\n(<entry index type scope>…</entry>)"]
    SP["INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY\n(system prompt, all 5 tasks)"] --> D
    D --> E["LLM output\n(enhanced description / release notes)"]
    B2["Human-edited notes\n(round-tripped from PR body)"] --> F
    B3["Changelog fallback\n(non-LLM path)"] --> F
    E --> F["wrapNotesRegion"]
    F --> G["neutralizeMarkers\n(<!-- → &lt;!-- for releasekit-/rk- prefix)"]
    G --> H["wrapMarkerRegion\n(open marker + content + close marker)"]
    H --> I["GitHub PR body / Release body"]
    I -->|"extractNotesRegion\n(indexOf slicing)"| J["Extracted notes\n(forged markers inert)"]

Loading

%%{init: {'theme': 'base', 'themeVariables': {"darkMode": true, "background": "#0d1117", "primaryColor": "#21262d", "primaryTextColor": "#e6edf3", "primaryBorderColor": "#8b949e", "lineColor": "#8b949e", "textColor": "#e6edf3", "edgeLabelBackground": "#161b22", "actorBkg": "#21262d", "actorBorder": "#8b949e", "actorTextColor": "#e6edf3", "actorLineColor": "#8b949e", "signalColor": "#8b949e", "signalTextColor": "#e6edf3", "noteBkgColor": "#373320", "noteBorderColor": "#d4a72c", "noteTextColor": "#f0e6c0", "labelBoxBkgColor": "#21262d", "labelBoxBorderColor": "#8b949e", "labelTextColor": "#e6edf3", "loopTextColor": "#e6edf3", "activationBkgColor": "#30363d", "activationBorderColor": "#8b949e"}}}%%
flowchart TD
    A["Commit subject / PR body\n(attacker-influenceable)"] --> B["ChangelogEntry"]
    B --> C["renderEntry / renderEntries\n(escAttr + escBody + XML fence)"]
    C --> D["LLM user prompt\n(<entry index type scope>…</entry>)"]
    SP["INSTRUCTION_HIERARCHY\n(system prompt, all 5 tasks)"] --> D
    D --> E["LLM output\n(enhanced description / release notes)"]
    B2["Human-edited notes\n(round-tripped from PR body)"] --> F
    B3["Changelog fallback\n(non-LLM path)"] --> F
    E --> F["wrapNotesRegion"]
    F --> G["neutralizeMarkers\n(<!-- → &lt;!-- for releasekit-/rk- prefix)"]
    G --> H["wrapMarkerRegion\n(open marker + content + close marker)"]
    H --> I["GitHub PR body / Release body"]
    I -->|"extractNotesRegion\n(indexOf slicing)"| J["Extracted notes\n(forged markers inert)"]

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_{Reviews (2): Last reviewed commit: "fix(notes): neutralize marker sequences ..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[github-actions]

Standing release PR: #555 · v0.40.1 queued (4 packages) · open 1h 58m · ✅ ready to merge

Release Preview — v0.40.0 → v0.40.1

Note: Labels on this PR are advisory in standing-pr mode. Bumps come from conventional commits in the standing PR; override by editing labels on the standing PR itself. Add release:immediate to bypass the standing PR and release this PR directly.

These changes will be added to the release PR (#555) when merged:

Changelog

monorepo 0.40.0 → 0.40.1

Fixed

• neutralize marker sequences and harden LLM prompts against injection (notes)

All packages → 0.40.1 (sync versioning)

• @releasekit/version
• @releasekit/notes
• @releasekit/publish
• @releasekit/release

After merge — predicted release

No version escalation — this PR's changes will be included in the queued release without affecting the projected versions.

Package	Standing PR	This PR	After merge
monorepo	0.40.1	0.40.1	0.40.1

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