permission-scope-audit

Skill: Permission Scope Audit

Purpose

Detects over-broad permission requests where a narrower permission or privacy-preserving alternative API is sufficient, violating Guideline 5.1.1(iii) data minimization requirements.

Apple Guideline

• Primary: 5.1.1(iii) — Data Collection and Storage: Accessing User Data — Data Minimization
• Related: 5.1.1(ii), 5.1.2
• Reference: references/guidelines/5-legal.md

Real-World Rejection Cases

• Case: App requested Always location when WhenInUse was sufficient — reviewer flagged over-collection Source: Apple Developer Forums, multiple threads Root cause: Always location requires explicit justification (navigation, fitness tracking, delivery); requesting it for simple map display violates data minimization — reviewers check that the scope of the requested permission matches the declared use case

Trigger

Invoke on any iOS/macOS project to detect permission scope mismatches and suggest privacy-preserving alternative APIs.

Inputs

Name	Type	Default	Description
project_root	path	cwd	iOS/macOS project root
shared_context	object	nil	Pre-collected context from appstore-full-audit Phase 1

Actions

Phase 1: Context Collection

Skip this phase if shared_context is provided.

1. Glob **/*.swift — collect all Swift source files.
2. Glob **/*.m — collect Objective-C source files.
3. Glob **/Info.plist — locate Info.plist.
4. Glob **/*.entitlements — locate entitlement files (check background location entitlement).

Phase 2: Checks

1. Always location permission scope Grep pattern requestAlwaysAuthorization in **/*.swift and **/*.m. If found, Read surrounding context and check for navigation, fitness, delivery, or background tracking use case. If app category does not clearly require background location (e.g., simple map display, location tagging for posts), flag → 🟠 HIGH. Also Grep com.apple.location.always in **/*.entitlements — if entitlement absent but requestAlwaysAuthorization called → 🟠 HIGH.