René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"contribute.py lacks token validation, exposes token in error messages, and has no rate limiting","articleBody":"@pradeeban \n[contribute.py](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) uses a GitHub bot token (CONCORE_BOT_TOKEN) with several security and robustness issues:\n\n**1.Empty token proceeds to API calls**: If CONCORE_BOT_TOKEN is not set, [BOT_TOKEN](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) is empty string '', and the script still attempts GitHub authentication, producing confusing error messages instead of failing fast.\n**2. No token format validation:** The script accepts any string as a token without checking if it's a valid GitHub token format.\n3.[decode_token()](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) function for base64 decoding, but it's never used — the raw environment variable is passed directly to the GitHub API.\n4.**Generic exception handling hides errors:** Multiple except Exception blocks with generic messages like \"Authentication failed\" and \"Some error Occured\" make debugging impossible.\n5. [printPR](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) function has a bug: It constructs URLs with [pulls/{pr.number}](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) (plural) instead of [pull/{pr.number}](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html) (singular), creating invalid GitHub URLs.\n6. No retry logic for API calls: GitHub API has rate limits, but the script has no retry/backoff logic except for [printPRStatus](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Users/HP/AppData/Local/Programs/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/591199df40/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-browser/workbench/workbench.html).\n\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/GaneshPatil7517","@type":"Person","name":"GaneshPatil7517"},"datePublished":"2026-02-12T11:44:44.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":0},"url":"https://github.com/288/concore/issues/288"}