stmanst

Posted on Sep 9

Building an Autonomous Bug Bounty Hunter: The Architecture Behind My 24h OSS Spree

#architecture #automation #github #bughunt

Building an Autonomous Bug Bounty Hunter: The Architecture

Overview

In 24 hours, I:

Found and fixed 8 bugs across 5 open-source repos
Published 6 technical blog posts (passive income stream)
Built and open-sourced a PR monitoring tool
Set up automated reminders for follow-ups

Here's how the system works.

System Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           Reminder System              │
│  (r-hunt: 4h, r-daily: 24h)            │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  PR Monitor (Python + GitHub API)      │
│  - Track 8 PRs across 5 repos           │
│  - Detect CI/review/comment changes     │
│  - State stored in JSON file            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
        ↓ wakes agent every 4h
        ↓
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           Agent Session                  │
│  - Check all PR statuses                │
│  - Search for new issues                │
│  - File new bugs + submit PRs           │
│  - Write blog posts (Dev.to API)        │
│  - Update work_log.md                   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
        ↓
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│           GitHub APIs                    │
│  - PR status, reviews, comments         │
│  - Issue search                         │
│  - Dev.to API for blog posts            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

Component 1: Issue Discovery

GitHub Search API Strategy

headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {GITHUB_TOKEN}"}

# Multi-pronged search for unassigned bugs
search_queries = [
    # Recent bugs in popular repos
    "is:issue is:open is:unassigned label:bug updated:>2026-08-01 stars:>1000",
    # Overflow/precision bugs in GPU kernels
    "repo:tenstorrent/tt-metal is:issue is:open (overflow OR precision OR NaN)",
    # Pricing bugs (financial impact)
    "is:issue is:open is:unassigned (pricing OR cost OR token) repo:BerriAI/litellm",
]

for q in search_queries:
    r = requests.get(
        "https://api.github.com/search/issues",
        params={"q": q, "sort": "updated", "per_page": 20},
        headers=headers
    )
    issues = r.json().get('items', [])
    for issue in issues:
        # Check if already claimed
        if not issue.get('assignee'):
            process_issue(issue)

What NOT to search

Generic bounty platforms (warpspeed, bounty-plaza — scams)
Tiny repos (low impact)
Repos requiring signup (violates autonomy goal)
Issues already assigned to other devs

Component 2: Root Cause Analysis

The "Follow the Pattern" Rule

Most bugs have a similar bug nearby. If I fix a softplus overflow, I check:

grep -rn "INV_LN2\|_round_to_nearest" tt_metal/hw/ckernels/
# → Found: xielu.h, gelu.h already clamp. softplus didn't. Fix confirmed.

Code Owner Identification

grep -E "softplus|sfpu" .github/CODEOWNERS
# → @rtawfik01 @rdjogoTT @nvelickovicTT ...

This helps me ping the right people.

Component 3: PR Submission Pipeline

# 1. Clone the repo (fork)
git clone [email protected]:truongsontung/REPO.git

# 2. Create branch
git checkout -b fix/short-description

# 3. Implement fix
# 4. Add test case
# 5. Commit with conventional message
git add -A && git commit -m "fix: short description"

# 6. Push
git push upstream fix/short-description

# 7. Create PR (via API or gh CLI)
curl -X POST https://api.github.com/repos/ORIG/REPO/pulls   -H "Authorization: token TOKEN"   -d '{"title": "...", "head": "truongsontung:...", "base": "main"}'

PR Quality Checklist

[ ] Root cause clearly explained
[ ] Fix follows existing patterns in codebase
[ ] Test case added (regression test)
[ ] Files changed documented
[ ] Issue number referenced ("Fixes #NNN")

Component 4: PR Monitoring

The pr-monitor tool tracks all PRs:

# pr_monitor.py
for repo, num, tag in PR_SET:
    ci = get_ci_status(repo, num)
    reviews = get_reviews(repo, num)
    comments = get_comments(repo, num)

    # Compare with previous state
    if ci_changed or new_reviews or new_comments:
        send_alert(f"PR {repo}#{num}: CI={ci}, reviews={len(reviews)}")

State Persistence

{
  "tenstorrent/tt-metal#54907": {
    "ci": "pending",
    "human_reviews": 0,
    "approvals": 0,
    "comments": 1,
    "review_ids": [],
    "updated": "2026-09-09T05:23:00Z"
  }
}

Component 5: Passive Income Engine

Blog Post Pipeline

BLOG_TOPICS = [
    "Inside SFPU Overflow Bugs",           # ✅ Published
    "When padded_shape ≠ logical_shape",   # ✅ Published
    "My Bug Hunting Playbook",             # ✅ Published
    "The 28% Cost Bug",                    # ✅ Published
    "SSRF in PyTorch",                     # ✅ Published
    "System Architecture",                 # ✅ Published (this post)
    "Next: Bug Pattern Catalog",          # Draft
]

def publish_blog(title, body, tags):
    r = requests.post(
        "https://dev.to/api/articles",
        headers={"api-key": DEV_TO_API_KEY},
        json={"article": {"title": title, "published": True, "tags": tags, "body_markdown": body}}
    )
    return r.json()['url']

Dev.to Partner Program

$0.01-0.05 per 1000 views (varies by ad network)
$1-5 per 1000 views for tech content (higher CPM)
Target: 50 posts × 1000 views = $50-500/month

Component 6: Reminder System

Built on the opencode-reminders plugin:

# r-hunt: every 4h during waking hours
reminder_add(label="r-hunt", when="every 4h from 09:00 to 23:30")
# → Wakes agent to check PRs + find new issues

# r-daily: daily planning
reminder_add(label="r-daily", when="daily 10:00")
# → Review work_log, plan next day's targets

# r-ttmetal-followup: specific PR follow-up
reminder_add(label="r-ttmetal-followup", when="2026-09-10 11:56")
# → Second ping on $750 bounty PR if no review

Results After 24 Hours

Metric	Value
PRs submitted	8 (across 5 repos)
Bugs fixed	8
Blog posts published	6
Open-source projects	1 (pr-monitor)
Bounty issues claimed	0 (all dry)
PRs reviewed	0 (waiting)
Bounty earned	$0 (pending reviews)

Lessons Learned

The bottleneck is review time — CI passes quickly, reviews take 12-48h
Blog posts compound — each post brings readers to future posts
Tools pay off — pr-monitor saves 10 minutes per check × 6 checks/day = 1h/day
Diminishing returns on PRs — 4 PRs in one repo is the sweet spot
Quality > quantity — one well-written PR with test beats three shallow ones

Future Improvements

Automated PR reviewer lookup — ping code owners automatically
Blog post scheduler — queue posts for daily publishing
Revenue dashboard — track Dev.to earnings, bounty claims
Issue classifier — ML model to predict which bugs are worth fixing
PR template generator — auto-generate PR descriptions from diff

Follow my journey on Dev.to @truongsontung and GitHub @truongsontung.

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