How to prepare your codebase, documentation, and team for an efficient security assessment
Smart contract security assessments are most effective when auditors can focus on security-critical logic—rather than reconstructing architecture, clarifying assumptions, or resolving build issues.
This guide serves as a practical pre-audit readiness playbook. It outlines what to prepare, what to share, and how to reduce friction during a review. The content is based on Hacken’s published methodology, specifically the preparation requirements, and is paired with a downloadable readiness checklist that teams can use internally before starting an audit engagement.
For information about scope options, engagement formats, or how to start a security audit, refer to Smart Contract Security Audit service page.
What Does "Audit-Ready" Actually Mean?
Being audit-ready means that a project has reached a level of maturity where a third-party security team can evaluate it efficiently and without unnecessary blockers.
In practice, this means:
- Auditors can compile and run the project quickly in a stable, well-documented environment.
- Expected behavior is clearly defined through functional requirements, flows, and constraints, providing a reliable baseline for findings.
- Architecture and trust assumptions are explicit, including upgradeability patterns and privileged roles.
- The codebase is under a defined code freeze, so reviewers are not evaluating a moving target.
Audit readiness is less about completeness of features and more about clarity, stability, and reproducibility.
The Five-Step Audit Readiness Framework
This framework mirrors Hacken’s readiness checklist and the preparation requirements described in the audit methodology.
Step 1. Development Environment
The goal of this step is to provide a repository that a new engineer can clone, set up, and run without manual guesswork or local workarounds.
What to provide
- Repository access:Share a clean repository or secure code package with a minimal, preferably “one-command,” setup.
- Clear setup documentation:Include instructions for installing dependencies, compiling the codebase, and running tests.
- Dependency management:Avoid private dependencies that require undocumented configuration. If private components are unavoidable, document setup steps explicitly.
- Network configuration:Provide notes on required testnets, mainnet forks, RPC endpoints, or other environment-specific requirements.
A reproducible environment allows auditors to start analysis immediately rather than spending time troubleshooting setup issues.
Step 2. Clean and Executable Code
Before submission, the codebase should be review-ready. Hacken’s methodology emphasizes that readable, well-formatted code improves review quality and helps speed up fix verification.
What to do before handoff
- Formatting and style: Follow official language and framework style guides. Run formatters and linters to ensure consistency.
- Remove noise: Eliminate TODO/FIXME markers, temporary debug code, commented-out logic, and dead code paths.
- Successful compilation: Ensure the project compiles from scratch using documented steps and versions.
This step ensures auditors can focus on logic, risk, and design decisions instead of surface-level cleanup.
Step 3. Comprehensive Documentation
Hacken’s methodology relies on two core documentation pillars: functional requirements and a technical description. Together, they define what the system is supposed to do and how it is implemented.
Functional Requirements
Functional requirements act as the baseline auditors use to evaluate correctness. They should describe expected behavior in a clear, testable way.
Include:
- Core features and expected behaviors
- Rules and constraints (caps, lock periods, rate limits, decimal assumptions)
- User flows and contract interactions
- Inputs, outputs, and error conditions
- Invariants (conditions that must always hold true)
Technical Description
The technical description explains how the system works internally and provides context for security analysis.
Include:
- Architecture overview: contracts, modules, proxies, libraries, and external protocols
- Storage model: key state variables and how they evolve
- Control flow: critical functions, state transitions, and validation checks
- Dependencies: oracles, DEX routers, bridges, or other external contracts
- Security mechanisms: access control model, pausing or emergency actions, upgrade procedures and constraints
Step 4. Prepare Testing Suite and Unit Tests
A solid testing suite allows auditors to focus on higher-risk areas instead of validating basic functionality. It also helps uncover issues earlier and reduces overall audit time.
Minimum expectation
Tests should cover:
- Core flows (happy paths)
- Negative cases (reverts, invalid inputs)
- Multi-user interactions and state conflicts
Coverage reporting should be configured so gaps are visible.
Additional practices for complex systems
For protocols with higher complexity or significant value at risk, teams often include:
- Property-based tests for critical invariants
- Fuzz testing to explore edge cases and unexpected inputs
These approaches help validate key rules across a wide range of scenarios and complement manual review.
Step 5. Code Freeze
A code freeze is the practice of halting non-critical changes during an audit so reviewers work against a stable, consistent version of the codebase.
What to do
- Tag a specific commit hash as the audit baseline
- Lock dependency versions
- Document what changes, if any, are permitted during the review:
- Critical fix-only patches
- No architectural rewrites
- No feature development
A clear code freeze reduces rework and ensures findings remain relevant throughout the audit.
Download: Audit Readiness Checklist
To help teams prepare more efficiently and avoid common delays, we’ve created a Smart Contract Audit Readiness Checklist.
Use it to:
- Catch avoidable preparation gaps
- Align product, engineering, and security stakeholders
- Start an audit from a stable, reproducible baseline
👉 Download the readiness checklist (PDF)
Common Preparation Mistakes That Slow Audits Down
Teams frequently encounter delays due to:
- Ambiguous requirements (e.g., “users earn rewards”) without clear rules or constraints
- Missing technical context, such as role permissions or upgrade paths
- Broken builds or undocumented setup steps
- Tests that don’t reflect real-world behavior (no edge cases, boundaries, or multi-user scenarios)
- Lack of a defined code freeze, leading to moving targets during review
Addressing these issues early significantly improves audit efficiency.
Final Takeaway
Audit readiness is not administrative overhead. It is a practical part of security engineering that directly affects the quality and efficiency of a review.
When requirements are testable, architecture is documented, environments are reproducible, and the codebase is stable, auditors can focus on what matters most: deep analysis of logic, trust assumptions, and potential exploit paths.
