AI Slop Code Risk Monitor

coredns/coredns

Name: coredns/coredns — Go Code Quality & Security Review | AI Slop Code Risk Monitor
Creator: AI Slop Code Risk Monitor

Adjusted legacy signal; badge bands: 25 / 50 / 75 (different from dashboard bands).

CoreDNS is a DNS server that chains plugins

0.4 Low pattern signal View on GitHub

Open-Source Code Quality, Security and Technical Debt Review

This report summarizes scanner evidence for coredns/coredns, a Go project with 14,402 GitHub stars. SynthScan examined 138,054 lines of code across 978 source files, recording 43 pattern matches distributed across 6 syntactic categories. The legacy adjusted pattern signal is 0.4 (Low pattern signal); it is not an authorship estimate.

Use the findings to ask whether maintainers can explain intent, verify dependencies, simplify unnecessary scaffolding, and focus review effort. Risk Payload v1 adds ownership, supply-chain, over-engineering, and review-effort vectors when available. These are prompts for human verification, not probabilities, security findings, or measured maintenance costs.

0.4

Adjusted Signal

0.4

Raw Pattern Score

100%

Time Factor

2026-10-30

Last Push

14.4K

Stars

Language

138.1K

Lines of Code

978

Files

Pattern Hits

2026-10-31

Scan Date

0.00

HC Hit Rate

Risk Review · Payload v1

Use each vector to guide manual verification of the underlying findings.

Payload schema: 1.0.0 · Engine: 2.0.0 · Scoring: heuristic-density-v1 · Scan date: 2026-10-31.

Cognitive Ownership Risk 1.9/100 · LOW

Can maintainers explain intent, assumptions, and trade-offs? 43 finding(s).

Hallucinated Dependency & Supply Chain Risk 0.0/100 · LOW

Are imports declared and package/API names verified? 0 finding(s).

Agent Over-Engineering Ratio 0.0/100 · LOW

Are wrappers, guards, and repeated structures necessary? 1 finding(s).

PR Review Velocity Impact 1.8/100 · LOW

Which changes need focused human review? 43 finding(s).

What These Metrics Mean

Adjusted Signal: Legacy pattern score normalized per 1,000 scanned lines and multiplied by the repository-level time factor. It is not an estimate of AI authorship.
Raw Pattern Score: Sum of severity- and context-weighted pattern findings before applying the time factor.
Time Factor: A coarse multiplier based on repository last-push metadata. It does not identify when individual code was written.
Pattern Hits: Count of configured pattern findings. Review each location and surrounding code before acting.
HC Hit Rate: High- and critical-severity findings per scanned file. Severity is a configured detector weight, not proof of a vulnerability or authorship.
Lines / Files: Scan coverage denominators used by the legacy normalized score.

Pattern-Signal History

This chart tracks the legacy adjusted pattern score across scan runs. Changes can reflect source changes, scan coverage, or detector/scoring versions; they do not measure AI adoption or prove that a team refactored code. Compare runs only when their scoring versions are compatible. The dashed line tracks the raw pattern-hit count.

Severity Breakdown

Groups findings by configured severity weight. Severity is not a confidence estimate, security rating, or proof that a package is missing. Verify imports against the project's manifests and inspect each finding in its local design context.

CRITICAL 0HIGH 1MEDIUM 1LOW 41

Directory Score Breakdown

This horizontal bar chart shows where configured pattern scores accumulate across directories. Treat the bars as locations to inspect, not as evidence of authorship or code quality. Use the file-level findings to decide whether a directory needs a focused ownership, dependency, complexity, or review check.

Pattern Findings

The scanner identified 43 distinct pattern matches across 6 syntactic categories. Each entry below represents a discrete location in the source code where the engine recorded a detector match to inspect in context. Expand any category row to inspect the individual file paths, line numbers, code snippets, and the lexical context (CODE, COMMENT, or STRING) in which each match was detected.

Reading the findings table: The Severity column indicates the configured finding weight (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW). The Context column identifies whether the match occurred inside executable code, an inline comment, or a string literal — legacy comment-context matches receive a ×1.5 score weight. The ⚡ bolt icon marks clustered matches: three or more patterns within a 10-line window, each receiving an additional ×1.5 density multiplier under the legacy scoring model.

Over-Commented Block36 hits · 36 pts

Severity	File	Line	Snippet	Context
LOW	plugin.cfg	1	# Directives are registered in the order they should be executed.	COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/config.go	41		COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/config.go	81		COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/config.go	101	// (refreshed on each matching packet). A zero or negative value disables	COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/server.go	1	// Package dnsserver implements CoreDNS as a Caddy server type.	COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/server.go	21	// SetDirectives copies the supplied list and rejects empty or duplicate names.	COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/directives.go	1	package dnsserver	COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/server_quic.go	381	}	COMMENT
LOW	core/dnsserver/server_quic.go	421	_, err = io.ReadFull(r, buf)	COMMENT
LOW	test/view_test.go	161	t.Error(err)	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/plugin.go	21	// Handler is like dns.Handler except ServeDNS may return an rcode	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/plugin.go	41	// so it can be logged by designated error-handling plugin.	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/rewrite/name_test.go	401	if got := r.rewriteString(tc.src); got != tc.expected {	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/cache/cache.go	201	// usableAnswer reports whether m is a complete, cache-valid positive response	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/cache/cache.go	221	// owner with more than one distinct CNAME target, or a loop) it has no	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/test/scrape.go	1	// Adapted by Miek Gieben for CoreDNS testing.	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/file/lookup.go	61	)	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/file/xfr_test.go	21	records := zone.All()	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/file/tree/tree.go	1	// Copyright ©2012 The bíogo Authors. All rights reserved.	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/file/tree/less.go	1	package tree	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/shed/fdmutex_test.go	1	package shed	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/siit/siit.go	101	}	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/kubernetes/parse.go	21	// (zone.pin._zone.service.namespace.svc.zone); only set when the zonal	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/kubernetes/parse.go	41	// label selects the semantics; bare words are safe there because the	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/kubernetes/object/object.go	1	// Package object holds functions that convert the objects from the k8s API in	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/metadata/provider.go	1	// Package metadata provides an API that allows plugins to add metadata to the context.	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/metadata/provider.go	21	// if cached != "" {	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/pkg/proxyproto/proxyproto.go	21		COMMENT
LOW	plugin/pkg/proxyproto/proxyproto.go	41	type PacketConn struct {	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/pkg/tls/tls.go	21	// no args	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/pkg/up/up.go	1	// Package up is used to run a function for some duration. If a new function is added while a previous run is	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/pkg/fall/fall.go	1	// Package fall handles the fallthrough logic used in plugins that support it. Be careful when including this	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/pkg/upstream/upstream.go	21		COMMENT
LOW	plugin/route53/route53.go	161	// maybeUnescape parses s and converts escaped ASCII codepoints (in octal) back	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/route53/lock_repro_test.go	21	// class that plugin/azure fixed in PR #8447 ("plugin/azure: don't hold zMu	COMMENT
LOW	plugin/deprecated/setup.go	1	// Package deprecated is used when we deprecated plugin. In plugin.cfg just go from	COMMENT

AI Response Leakage1 hit · 8 pts

Severity	File	Line	Snippet	Context
HIGH	owners_generate.go	46	// # In this example, @doctocat owns any files in the build/logs	COMMENT

AI Slop Vocabulary1 hit · 3 pts

Severity	File	Line	Snippet	Context
MEDIUM	plugin/etcd/setup.go	173	// Use Go's standard time.ParseDuration for robust parsing	COMMENT

Deep Nesting3 hits · 3 pts

Severity	File	Line	Context
LOW	.github/test-capabilities.py	18	CODE
LOW	.github/test-capabilities.py	48	CODE
LOW	.github/test-capabilities.py	197	CODE

Slop Phrases1 hit · 2 pts

Severity	File	Line	Snippet	Context
LOW	plugin/dnssec/black_lies.go	19	// This inturn makes every NXDOMAIN answer a NODATA one, don't forget to flip	COMMENT

AI Structural Patterns1 hit · 1 pts

Severity	File	Line	Snippet	Context
LOW	.github/test-capabilities.py	48		CODE