DEV Community

Cover image for SCAR: A High-Trust Operating System for AI Coding Assistants (Stop Package Hallucinations in Your Repo)
Deviprasad Shetty
Deviprasad Shetty Subscriber

Posted on

SCAR: A High-Trust Operating System for AI Coding Assistants (Stop Package Hallucinations in Your Repo)

#opensource #tooling #ai #llm

AI coding assistants are everywhere—but trust is not.

We’ve all seen it:

  • Invented npm/PyPI packages that don’t exist.
  • Confident code that ignores your architecture.
  • “TODO: implement later” mocks accidentally shipped to production.
  • Long context windows wasted because the model never actually reads your repo.

SCAR fixes this.

SCAR (Specification for Code Assistant Reliability) is a high-trust operating system for AI coding assistants. It’s an open specification powered by a single prompt.yaml that turns generic models into governed, senior-level engineering copilots.

Get SCAR:
https://github.com/redmoon0x/scar-spec.git

What SCAR Solves

  1. Package hallucination
  2. Enforces strict package verification rules.
  3. No suggesting libraries that don’t exist.

  4. Encourages verified, documented, actively maintained dependencies.

  5. Misunderstanding developer intent

  6. Forces assistants to ask clarifying questions instead of guessing.

  7. Encourages breaking work into concrete steps.

  8. Aligns with your codebase, not generic examples.

  9. Mock vs real implementation abuse

  10. Defaults to production-grade, runnable code.

  11. Only uses mocks when explicitly requested or clearly appropriate.

  12. Bans empty stubs and TODOs in core paths.

  13. Poor context usage in large codebases

  14. Requires reading package.json, requirements.txt, README, styles, and structure.

  15. Forces alignment with existing patterns, naming, design systems, and architecture.

Why This Matters

Every hallucinated package, broken abstraction, and fake implementation is drag on:

  • Delivery stability
  • Developer trust
  • Incident rate
  • Onboarding and code review time

SCAR is designed to be:

  • Simple to adopt
  • Transparent
  • Compatible with any LLM / AI coding tool
  • Auditable as part of your engineering governance

How to Use SCAR

  1. Add SCAR to your tooling:
  2. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/redmoon0x/scar-spec.git

  3. Open prompt.yaml.

  4. Load it as a system-level prompt:

  5. Use SCAR as the non-editable “system message” for:

    • Your in-IDE assistant
    • Your internal AI dev tools
    • ChatOps bots that propose or edit code

  6. Layer your org rules on top:

  7. Add framework choices, architecture constraints, security rules.

  8. Keep SCAR as the foundation for:

    • No hallucinated packages
    • No incomplete implementations
    • No design-system drift

  9. Monitor compliance:

  10. Log violations (e.g., hallucinated dependencies, missing error handling).

  11. Use SCAR as a standard in code reviews for AI-generated changes.

Who Should Use SCAR?

  • Teams running AI coding copilots at scale
  • Platform / DevEx engineers designing internal AI tools
  • Security and compliance teams who need enforceable guardrails
  • Solo devs who want their AI to behave like a senior engineer, not a code jukebox

If you’re serious about AI in your engineering stack, SCAR gives you a pragmatic, enforceable baseline.

Start here:
Github

Top comments (0)