Cyclonedx Spec Reviewer

CycloneDX specification reviewer

Use this skill when a pull request changes CycloneDX output, schema handling, validators, package-manager integrations, BOM enrichment, or custom properties.

Sources of truth

Review in this order:

1. Local schemas in data/bom-1.5.schema.json, data/bom-1.6.schema.json, data/bom-1.7.schema.json
2. Other local schemas when relevant, especially data/cyclonedx-2.0-bundled.schema.json
3. Official CycloneDX documentation and property-taxonomy guidance

JSON-schema validity is only the starting point. Also review semantic correctness.

AI-BOM focus areas

When a change introduces AI-BOM, model inventory, prompt/config discovery, or agent/MCP inventory, explicitly review the standard AI/ML fields already present in CycloneDX 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and 2.0.

• formulation
• pedigree
• modelCard
• data components and componentData
• services
• evidence
• externalReferences

Treat AI-BOM as CycloneDX-first modeling, not as permission to shift standard semantics into custom properties.

What to check

1. Prefer standard fields over custom properties

Flag a change when it introduces or preserves a custom property for data that already fits a standard field such as:

• supplier, manufacturer, authors, publisher
• externalReferences
• evidence.identity
• evidence.occurrences
• pedigree
• hashes
• licenses
• scope
• properties registered in public taxonomy when applicable

If a custom property is still necessary, require a clear namespace and a narrow purpose.

2. Reject ambiguous or risky custom properties

Flag custom properties that are:

• unnamespaced
• duplicates of existing CycloneDX fields
• host-specific or non-reproducible
• likely to leak local paths, usernames, secrets, or environment-specific details
• packing structured data into comma-delimited strings when a structured field exists
• likely to confuse downstream consumers about meaning

3. Check semantic field use

Review whether attributes are used for the right purpose:

• manufacturer for the entity that created the component
• supplier for the entity that supplied or distributed it
• authors for people, not organizations
• deprecated author only as a compatibility holdover and preferably not in new output
• publisher only when publication semantics are actually intended
• externalReferences[].type matches the URL purpose
• scope is semantically correct for required, optional, excluded, or runtime-only style data
• bom-ref values are unique and resolvable

4. Check new ecosystem/package-manager integrations

When a PR adds or changes ecosystem support, check whether emitted components and services are missing expected data that cdxgen can usually infer:

• stable bom-ref
• type, name, version
• purl when a native package identity exists
• dependency edges
• hashes when resolved artifacts or lockfile integrity data are available
• licenses when manifest or registry metadata provides them
• externalReferences for distribution or VCS when directly available
• evidence fields when provenance or file-location evidence is collected

Flag missing data as a gap when the source material is already available to the integration.

5. Check AI-BOM and AI/ML modeling

Review whether AI-related output uses the standard CycloneDX AI/ML structures correctly:

• formulation should describe how something was created, trained, assembled, deployed, or otherwise brought into its current form. Do not treat it as a generic dumping ground for unrelated inventory.
• formulation.workflows, tasks, and steps should represent real process information. If the PR only discovered runtime usage or file-level evidence, verify that this is not being overstated as build/training lineage.
• machine-learning-model components should prefer modelCard for task, architecture, datasets, and metrics.
• training or evaluation datasets should prefer modelCard.modelParameters.datasets, ideally via ref to stable type: data components when the BOM already has a stable dataset identity.
• model lineage such as fine-tunes, distillations, adapters, merges, and quantized derivatives should prefer pedigree.ancestors, pedigree.variants, commits, or patches. Notes may supplement this but should not be the only place where lineage is captured when a structured relation is known.
• inference endpoints belong in services, not components.
• prompt files, agent instructions, model config files, and notebooks are usually best represented as file components plus evidence, unless the spec clearly supports a richer standard structure.
• component.data must only be present for type: data components.
• component.modelCard should only be present for type: machine-learning-model.
• service evidence and any 2.0-only structures must be reviewed for spec-version downgrade behavior so that 1.5/1.6/1.7 output does not silently become semantically misleading.

Also review AI-specific custom properties carefully. A namespaced property is still a finding if it duplicates a standard field that now exists in the schema.

Review procedure

1. Identify the spec version(s) affected by the change.
2. Compare changed output fields against the local schema definitions.
3. Check whether any new custom property could be replaced by a standard field.
4. Check whether any deprecated field is newly introduced or expanded.
5. Check whether any new package-manager integration omits expected attributes that cdxgen already emits for comparable ecosystems.
6. For AI-BOM changes, compare every emitted AI field against formulation, modelCard, pedigree, componentData, services, and evidence in the local schemas.
7. Check whether AI-specific custom properties duplicate standard fields such as model type, task, lineage, datasets, provider, or runtime endpoints.
8. Check spec-version downgrade and upgrade paths, especially 1.5/1.6/1.7 versus 2.0 behavior for AI-BOM structures.
9. Produce findings in four groups: spec violation, semantic misuse, unnecessary customization, and expected data missing.

Expected review output

For every finding, include:

• exact field or property name
• why it is a problem
• preferred CycloneDX field or modeling approach
• schema/spec basis
• whether it is a repo-wide legacy pattern or introduced by the PR

Repo calibration findings

These repo-specific findings were identified while calibrating this skill and should be treated as known review heuristics.

• Self-generated BOMs for this repository currently expose three unnamespaced custom property names: SrcFile, ImportedModules, and LocalNodeModulesPath.

Iteration 1: legacy SrcFile property

• Current cdxgen output emits unnamespaced SrcFile properties.
• In self-generated BOMs this often duplicates evidence.identity[].methods[].value.
• When the intent is to show where a component was found, evidence.occurrences[].location is the more semantically correct field.

Iteration 2: legacy ImportedModules property

• Current cdxgen output emits unnamespaced ImportedModules.
• The value is packed as CSV-like text and mixes module names with symbol-like data.
• This is hard for downstream tooling to interpret and should be reviewed against evidence.occurrences plus symbol, or replaced with a clearly namespaced property if no standard field fits.

Iteration 3: legacy LocalNodeModulesPath property

• Current cdxgen output emits unnamespaced LocalNodeModulesPath.
• It can contain absolute host paths, which are environment-specific and potentially sensitive.
• Treat this as a strong signal for removal or redesign rather than a property to preserve.

Iteration 4: deprecated and incomplete producer metadata

• Current output may rely on deprecated metadata.component.author instead of authors or manufacturer.
• Root BOM metadata commonly has metadata.authors but not metadata.supplier.
• For published artifacts, review whether supplier and contact/manufacturer data should be emitted instead of or in addition to author-style fields.

Iteration 5: completeness gaps for emitted components

• Self-validation of a generated BOM for this repository still shows components missing license data and at least one component missing hashes/dependency linkage.
• When reviewing new integrations, treat missing license, hash, and dependency information as expected completeness checks, not optional polish, if the upstream ecosystem exposes that data.

Iteration 6: AI-BOM review heuristics

• cdx:ai:* properties are namespaced and therefore better than unnamespaced properties, but they should still be challenged when they duplicate standard CycloneDX AI/ML fields.
• In particular, review whether task, lineage, datasets, provider identity, runtime identity, and variant classification should move to modelCard, pedigree, externalReferences, services, or evidence.
• When a stable Hugging Face, model, or dataset identity is available, prefer durable references (bom-ref, purl, externalReferences, dataset refs) over free-text notes.
• If lineage is known only from model-repository metadata, pedigree.notes may be acceptable as supplemental context, but not as the sole representation when the relation itself is structured and reproducible.

Source: cdxgen/cdxgen — distributed by TomeVault.