Vex Publish

Vulnetix VEX Publication Skill

Use when

• Triage cycle is complete and you need to publish VEX statements for supply-chain consumers.
• A customer requested OpenVEX attestations for a specific delivery.
• Attaching VEX to a CycloneDX SBOM in a compliance bundle.
• Posting VEX status as a PR comment so reviewers see the security disposition.
• Auditing the decision history — VEX is the durable record of what was decided when.

Don't use for

• Making the triage decisions — use /vulnetix:vuln, /vulnetix:exploits, /vulnetix:fix first; this skill publishes existing decisions.
• Generating the SBOM itself — use /vulnetix:sbom-generate.

Conventions

This skill follows _lib/contract.md: the Vulnetix CLI is auto-installed by hooks, .vulnetix/capabilities.yaml is always present, every vulnetix vdb call is piped through a verified jq filter from _lib/jq/, independent calls run in parallel as concurrent Bash tool calls, and trailing follow-ups are limited to one line. See the contract for output style, memory write rules, and cooldowns.

Turns the decisions captured in .vulnetix/memory.yaml into a signed/uploadable VEX document.

Step 1: Load memory

Read .vulnetix/memory.yaml. Collect every entry with a non-default decision.choice (i.e. anything that isn't investigating).

Step 2: Map decisions → VEX status

Mapping (Vulnetix CLI uses the same):

• not-affected / risk-avoided → not_affected
• fix-applied → fixed
• risk-accepted / deferred / mitigated → affected (with mitigations)
• investigating → under_investigation

Step 3: Generate VEX

vulnetix triage --provider vulnetix --vex-format ${FORMAT:-openvex} -o json > .vulnetix/vex/${TIMESTAMP}.vex.json

Default format openvex. If user passes --format cyclonedx, the CLI emits CycloneDX VEX.

Step 4: Upload (conditional)

If user passed --upload:

vulnetix upload --file .vulnetix/vex/${TIMESTAMP}.vex.json

Otherwise, skip and report the local file path.

Step 5: GitHub PR comment (conditional)

If binaries.gh: true and we're inside a PR (env GITHUB_REF or gh pr view --json number):

gh pr comment "$PR_NUMBER" --body-file .vulnetix/vex/${TIMESTAMP}.vex.summary.md

Where the summary file is a short Markdown rendering of the VEX (auto-generated from the JSON).

Step 6: Render report

VEX statements: N
- not_affected: N
- fixed: N
- affected (with mitigations): N
- under_investigation: N
File: .vulnetix/vex/<timestamp>.vex.json
Uploaded: <yes|no>
PR comment: <yes|no>

Edge cases & gotchas

• VEX status maps from decision.choice via a closed dict — not-affected/risk-avoided → not_affected, fix-applied → fixed, risk-accepted/deferred/mitigated → affected (with mitigation), investigating → under_investigation. Custom decision strings break the mapping.
• --format openvex (default) and --format cyclonedx produce different schemas; consumers downstream typically prefer one or the other.
• --upload sends to the Vulnetix triage endpoint — requires authenticated CLI; community-tier may rate-limit.
• PR comment posting needs binaries.gh: true AND the current directory inside a PR-context git repo (CI envs typically have GITHUB_REF set).
• Signing with cosign uses keyless OIDC by default; the user must have a valid OIDC identity (CI runners typically do, dev laptops may not).
• Memory schema requires decision.choice populated for every entry to be published — entries with status: under_investigation are filtered out unless --include-investigating is passed.