If you find a security vulnerability, please open a GitHub Issue with the label security. If you prefer to report privately, include your contact information and I'll follow up directly.

Please include: steps to reproduce, potential impact, and any suggested fix.

In scope:

• Vulnerabilities in the application code (app/)
• Dependency vulnerabilities that affect Topic Watch
• Docker / docker-compose configuration issues
• CSRF or injection issues in the web UI

Out of scope (report to the relevant project instead):

• Your LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
• Apprise notification services (Apprise project)
• Your reverse proxy or hosting configuration

Topic Watch is designed as a personal, self-hosted tool. Adding authentication would mean managing users, passwords, and sessions - complexity that doesn't make sense for a single-user application.

If you deploy on a remote server, place Topic Watch behind a reverse proxy with your preferred auth layer (Authelia, Caddy basicauth, Nginx basic auth, etc.). See the README for examples.

Your data/config.yml contains sensitive values (API keys, notification URLs). Ensure it is not world-readable.

When deploying Topic Watch on a public network:

• TLS is required. Terminate TLS at your reverse proxy (Caddy, Nginx, Traefik) before forwarding to Topic Watch. Without TLS, CSRF tokens and session cookies are transmitted in plaintext.
• Enable secure cookies. Set TOPIC_WATCH_SECURE_COOKIES=true (or secure_cookies: true in data/config.yml) so cookies are only sent over HTTPS connections.
• Restrict network access. Bind Topic Watch to 127.0.0.1 and proxy from your reverse proxy. Do not expose port 8000 directly to the internet.
• Protect data/config.yml. This file contains your LLM API key. Ensure it is not world-readable (chmod 600 data/config.yml).
• Keep dependencies updated. Dependabot is configured on the repository. For self-hosted installs, run pip install --upgrade -r requirements.txt periodically.
• Use the Docker image. It runs as a non-root user with resource limits.

The /api/v1/ JSON API endpoints are unauthenticated, the same as the web UI. GET endpoints provide read access to all topic data including knowledge states. The single mutation endpoint (POST /api/v1/topics/{id}/check) is protected by CSRF.

If you expose Topic Watch to a network, apply the same reverse proxy authentication to API endpoints as you do to the web UI.