Secure Error Handling (harperaa) vs Security Review (affaan-m)
Secure Error Handling (harperaa) and Security Review (affaan-m) are both Security skills, so an agent choosing between them is matching on descriptions that overlap. Here is where they actually diverge.
Secure Error Handling
harperaa
A secure-coding pattern for the error path: return generic, environment-aware messages to users while logging the detail server-side, so a stack trace, database error, or file path never hands an attacker a map of your system. It shapes how failures are surfaced — not a scanner that finds the leaks for you, and narrower than a full security review: it does not cover auth, input validation, or the other vulnerability classes, only how errors are reported.
1 scenario in the bank answer to it
Security Review
affaan-m/ecc
Helps developers implement secure features by listing concrete checks and recommended patterns for authentication, input handling, secret management, API endpoints, and payment or sensitive flows. Unlike similarly named tools that scan code or produce vulnerability audits, this one focuses on design-time guidance and implementation checklists — it does not run automated SAST, assign severity scores, or perform penetration-style audits of diffs.
1 scenario in the bank answer to it
What is the difference between Secure Error Handling (harperaa) and Security Review (affaan-m)?
- Secure Error Handling (harperaa)
- A secure-coding pattern for the error path: return generic, environment-aware messages to users while logging the detail server-side, so a stack trace, database error, or file path never hands an attacker a map of your system. It shapes how failures are surfaced — not a scanner that finds the leaks for you, and narrower than a full security review: it does not cover auth, input validation, or the other vulnerability classes, only how errors are reported.
- Security Review (affaan-m)
- Helps developers implement secure features by listing concrete checks and recommended patterns for authentication, input handling, secret management, API endpoints, and payment or sensitive flows. Unlike similarly named tools that scan code or produce vulnerability audits, this one focuses on design-time guidance and implementation checklists — it does not run automated SAST, assign severity scores, or perform penetration-style audits of diffs.
Should I use Secure Error Handling or Security Review (affaan-m)?
The clearest answer is a situation each one is unambiguously right for. Both of these are drawn from the game's question bank.
Reach for Secure Error Handling when
After last Tuesday's PostgreSQL meltdown, the company's public 500 page leaked the live connection string and internal locations to every visitor, so the CTO demanded a coding convention that shows zero implementation detail to browsers while keeping all diagnostics in a backend log.
The skill shapes the visible side of failures by framing a coding convention: it tells you to give browsers a bland, context-aware notice and to sequester every technical artifact—live connection strings, internal locations, diagnostic output—inside server logs, which exactly resolves the split the CTO asked for. semgrep-rule-creator-trailofbits is the genuinely tempting distractor because the leak feels like a source-level artifact you could catch with a static-analysis rule, but that skill merely writes reusable Semgrep detection rules for specific bug patterns and paired test cases; it never influences what a web framework displays on an HTTP response or where operational logs are directed, so it cannot close the gap between user-facing text and backend retention.
Reach for Security Review (affaan-m) when
I'm about to design a new login + payment flow and want a clear, practical list of secure patterns, do/avoid rules, and concrete checks I should follow as I build the feature so we don't bake in mistakes. I don't want someone to comb the whole repo for every weakness, produce a full cross-system compliance report, or only review a single outstanding change.
Winner: security-review-affaan-m gives the practical, design-time guidance this person needs — concrete patterns and checks for authentication, input handling, secret management, endpoints and sensitive flows to follow while writing the feature. What it does that the others do not is focus on implementation guidance up front rather than producing vulnerability scan results, a prioritized compliance audit, or a narrow review of a pending change. Most tempting wrong answer: security-review-getsentry — it finds and labels code-level problems, so it looks useful, but its output is about surfacing and scoring findings from existing source code rather than giving the developer a checklist of patterns and design-time rules to follow. (Other traps: security-reviewer-jeffallan would overdeliver a prioritized, compliance-style audit across code, infra and deps — useful but the wrong scope and heavier than needed; security-review-waybarrios only examines the specific unmerged change and focuses on high-confidence exploit paths, so it won't provide the broad, feature-level implementation guidance the author wants.)
What they have in common
Both are filed under Security, the axis along which they collide. That shared ground is what makes an agent pick between them on description alone — and what makes it pick wrong.
Nearby comparisons
Reading the difference is not the same as spotting it at speed. That is the game.
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