Shadow Mode
Every API quality tool starts at maximum noise. Dino does the opposite.
Shadow Mode lets Dino earn your trust gradually. Start by watching silently. As confidence grows, increase autonomy.
The Four Levels
| Level | Name | What Dino Does | Config |
|---|
| L1 | Observe | Watches silently, builds baseline, reports findings | autonomy.level: observe |
| L2 | Suggest | Ranked findings with confidence scores | Planned (M1.5) |
| L3 | Write | Creates PRs with human approval | Planned (post-M2) |
| L4 | Enforce | Blocks CI on violations | autonomy.level: enforce |
How It Works
Observe Mode (default)
Dino scans your API, records findings, and reports them — but never blocks CI. Every scan result is saved to watch history for trend analysis.
dino watch --autonomy observe --interval 300
.dino/watch-history.jsonl. You review at your pace.
Use observe when: You’re evaluating Dino, onboarding a new API, or want to see what it finds before trusting it.
Enforce Mode
Dino blocks CI when it finds issues. dino watch returns exit code 1 on failures. dino diff --fail-on-breaking returns exit code 1 on breaking changes.
# In CI: single scan, fail the build on issues
dino watch --autonomy enforce --once
The Customer Journey
Day 1 → dino init, first scan, observe mode
Week 1 → "Found 12 issues across 7 scans. 2 false positives."
Week 2 → Adjust config, reduce false positives to 0
Week 3 → "14 scans, 100% useful findings"
Month 1 → Enable enforce mode in staging CI
Month 2 → Enable enforce mode in production CI
CI Integration
Observe in CI (non-blocking)
# GitHub Actions
- name: Dino Scan (observe)
run: dino watch --once --autonomy observe
continue-on-error: true
Enforce in CI (blocking)
# GitHub Actions
- name: Dino Scan (enforce)
run: dino watch --once --autonomy enforce
Breaking change gate
- name: Schema Gate
run: dino diff --fail-on-breaking
Start with observe mode in CI using continue-on-error: true. Review findings for a few weeks. When you trust them, remove continue-on-error and switch to enforce.
Watch History
Every dino watch iteration saves a record to .dino/watch-history.jsonl:
{
"timestamp": "2026-03-31T10:00:00Z",
"duration_ms": 4200,
"operations": 312,
"findings": 3,
"agents": { "input-fuzzer": "pass", "rbac-matrix": "2 findings" }
}
Shadow Mode levels 2 (Suggest) and 3 (Write) are on the roadmap. L2 adds confidence scoring and ranked recommendations. L3 will create pull requests with fixes, pending human approval.
