45ck ca-ra-role-explainer
Purpose
Explain the roles and trust implications of certificate authorities, registration authorities, and related issuance actors in a given design.
Trigger this skill when
- The current artifact contains authentication, certificate, transport-trust, token, or PKI behavior that needs structured review.
- You need to turn vague trust or crypto concerns into concrete findings, controls, or requirements.
- You want the next auth- or trust-focused action to be explicit rather than ad hoc.
Expected inputs
- system overview
- auth or trust flow description
- architecture diagrams
- protocol or implementation notes
- deployment assumptions
Deliverables
- review findings
- risk notes
- design recommendations
- test or verification suggestions
- recommended next skill
Operating procedure
- Read the artifact from an identity, trust, transport, and verification perspective rather than only from the happy path.
- Separate facts from assumptions and call out missing details that reduce confidence.
- Focus on the highest-risk failure modes first: interception, impersonation, replay, downgrade, leakage, unsafe recovery, or broken trust assumptions.
- Translate findings into explicit design, implementation, or verification actions.
- Prefer concrete flow-level reasoning over generic cryptography advice.
- Finish with the most sensible handoff skill based on the dominant weakness you found.
Quality gates
- Findings are specific to the artifact and its trust model, not generic crypto boilerplate.
- Output separates facts, assumptions, risks, controls, and recommended next action.
- Prioritization reflects exposure and exploitability, not just theoretical correctness.
- Recommendations are implementable and framed in a way that can be tested or reviewed later.
Handoff targets
- certificate-chain-reviewer
- certificate-revocation-reviewer
- trust-store-reviewer
Output style
- Be explicit about uncertainty.
- Prefer concrete flow, trust, and failure-path reasoning over slogans.
- Separate facts, risks, recommendations, and next steps.
- Make the output usable by engineers, reviewers, and test designers.
Failure modes to avoid
- Do not claim security merely because encryption or certificates exist somewhere in the design.
- Do not blur identification, authentication, authorization, session handling, and trust-anchor management into one vague discussion.
- Do not recommend controls without naming the attack or failure they address.
- Do not hide uncertainty when protocol or deployment details are missing.
Minimum output skeleton
## Summary
## Findings
## Structured outputs
## Risks
## Recommendations
## Recommended next skill