[EPIC] Crawl Track: Follow-up backlog from AI-assisted exercises

[nikhil2611]

Epic Description

Structured backlog of improvement opportunities identified during the Crawl Track AI-assisted learning exercises (Ex0–Ex11). Each child issue is scoped to fit in one PR and includes acceptance criteria linked to specific code paths.

Child Issues

#	Title	Code Path	Size	Depends On
#116	Raise test coverage 47% → 70%+	lib/chef/knife/*.rb	Large	Ex10 CI job
#117	Extend observability timing to search/node/ssh	search.rb, node_list.rb, ssh.rb	Small	Ex9 hook
#118	Add Brakeman SAST scan to CI	.github/workflows/	Small	Ex8 secret scan
#119	Harden bootstrap argument validation	bootstrap.rb	Medium	Ex5 hardening
#120	Frozen string literals in high-frequency commands	search.rb, node_list.rb	Small	Ex6 perf

Dependency Graph

#118 (SAST)       ──── standalone
#117 (observ.)    ──── standalone
#119 (bootstrap)  ──── standalone
#120 (frozen)     ──── after #116 (more coverage = safer refactor)
#116 (coverage)   ──── standalone (start here)

Suggested Order

1. Raise test line coverage from 47% to 70%+ #116 (coverage) + Add Brakeman SAST scan to CI for Ruby security analysis #118 (SAST) — parallel, no deps
2. Extend search timing observability to node, search, and ssh commands #117 (observability) + Harden argument validation in knife bootstrap with structured error messages #119 (bootstrap) — parallel
3. Apply frozen string literals and constant extraction to high-frequency knife commands #120 (frozen literals) — after Raise test line coverage from 47% to 70%+ #116 lands

Source

Generated from Crawl Track exercises in branch series learn/crawl/nikhil-ex*.