litellm/tests/test_litellm/proxy/policy_engine
Deepanshu Lulla 72f1b3e969
feat(guardrails): add Lakera v2 skip-message honoring and advisory (inject_system_message) mode (#34940)
* feat(guardrails): honor Lakera v2 skip-message flags and add advisory (inject_system_message) mode

Squashed rebase of bugfix/lakera-v2-skip-system-tool-messages onto latest
litellm_internal_staging (900+ commits ahead; a commit-by-commit rebase hit
repeated conflicts against the same files across earlier review-round
commits, so the branch's cumulative diff was reapplied in one pass instead).

Adds skip_system_message_in_guardrail/skip_tool_message_in_guardrail support
to Lakera v2, a third on_flagged: "inject_system_message" advisory mode, and
the associated masking-safety-guard hardening (multimodal content, non-
maskable message fields, combined messages+input, and structured Responses-
API input in advisory delivery) found across this PR's review rounds.

* fix(guardrails): don't let one invalid guardrail config crash proxy boot

init_guardrails_v2 had no try/except around initialize_guardrail, so a
guardrail whose litellm_params fail validation at construction time (for
example Lakera's on_flagged=inject_system_message combined with
mode=during_call, or a malformed advisory_system_message template) raised
uncaught and crashed the entire proxy at startup, taking down every other,
correctly-configured guardrail in the list. Catch ValueError/TypeError per
guardrail, log a warning, and skip it, matching the same pattern already
used for the DB-driven guardrail-creation path in guardrail_endpoints.py.

* fix(guardrails): preserve message fields and mask PII before advising in Lakera v2

Mask-in-place degraded to a hard block for any message carrying a field
beyond role/content (tool_call_id, tool_calls, name, cache_control), for a
message excluded by skip_system_message_in_guardrail/skip_tool_message_in_guardrail,
or for a message with no inspectable text, since it rewrote data["messages"]
wholesale from a synthetic role/content-only list built for the Lakera API
call. That made masking effectively unusable for any real tool-calling
conversation and made the skip flags flip every PII-only violation to a hard
block instead of masking just the in-scope text.

Replace the wholesale rewrite with a scope-index merge, reusing the same
merge_guardrailed_scoped_messages helper the OpenAI/Anthropic guardrail
translation handlers already use for this: patch content in place on a copy
of each original message actually sent to Lakera, and leave every
skipped/no-text/out-of-scope message untouched at its original position.
This also fixes on_flagged="inject_system_message" (advisory mode) shipping
raw unmasked PII to the model: a PII-only violation is now masked the same
way regardless of on_flagged, and the advisory note is reserved for flags
masking can't resolve on its own.

Addresses maintainer-reported regressions on BerriAI/litellm#34940.

* fix(guardrails): satisfy new lint gates for the masking/advisory fix

Parameterize the write-back helper's dict param and suppress the two new
lint rules that landed on the base while this branch was in flight: TQ008
(patching an internal collaborator) for two pre-existing tests unrelated to
this change, and LIT001 for a param that genuinely needs to mutate the
caller's request dict in place.

* fix(guardrails): normalize role casing in Lakera v2 masking scope, log skipped guardrails louder

Greptile finding: the masking scope helper compared roles case-sensitively
while filter_messages_by_skip_flags (used to build what's actually sent to
Lakera) normalizes casing, so an uppercase-cased "System"/"TOOL" role
survived the scope filter but was excluded from the inspected list. The
resulting length mismatch raised inside the strict positional zip, turning
a maskable PII-only violation into an unhandled request failure. Lowercase
the role comparison to match.

Also, per veria-ai's finding that a skipped invalid guardrail now fails
open: log it at error level with an explicit note that the proxy is
starting without that guardrail, so it's not mistaken for routine info.

* fix(guardrails): mask maskable PII in mixed violations before advising in Lakera v2

on_flagged="inject_system_message" only masked when a violation was
PII-only; a mixed violation (PII plus a non-PII flag like prompt injection)
fell straight through to the advisory branch with the raw PII still in
place, in both async_pre_call_hook and async_moderation_hook. Mask whatever
Lakera returned location data for before appending or logging the advisory,
so a mixed violation never ships raw PII just because something else was
also flagged.

Also degrade to blocking, same as block mode already does, when nothing
can be safely masked at all (multimodal content, or messages combined with
a Responses API input field) instead of showing an advisory note next to
raw, unredacted content.

Widened call_v2_guard/_mask_pii_in_messages/the write-back helper's message
parameters from list to Sequence to match what's actually passed through
from _filter_skipped_messages, instead of duplicating list(...) casts at
every call site.

* fix(guardrails): don't hard-block advisory mode for non-PII flags on non-maskable input

Bugbot finding: gating the entire inject_system_message branch on
is_multimodal_input hard-blocked every flagged request on Responses
instructions, combined messages+input, or multimodal content, including
a prompt-injection-only violation with no PII at all. Masking safety only
matters when there's actual PII to mask; a violation with no PII needs no
masking, so the advisory should still be delivered normally.

Only degrade to blocking when the breakdown actually contains a PII
detection and masking isn't safely possible. Otherwise, mask whatever's
maskable (if any) and deliver the advisory as before.

* fix(guardrails): require payload and breakdown for Lakera v2 advisory mode

Advisory mode's mixed-violation masking safety net can only redact
detected PII when Lakera's response carries both the breakdown (to
detect a PII hit at all) and payload (the location data to mask by).
payload=False or breakdown=False alongside on_flagged='inject_system_message'
silently forwarded raw PII next to the advisory note. Reject that
combination at construction and hot-reload time instead.

* fix(guardrails): skip_system_message_in_guardrail must not force-block Lakera masking

_has_responses_instructions treated any non-empty data["instructions"]
as unsafe to mask regardless of skip_system_message_in_guardrail, even
though that flag excludes the instructions-derived synthetic system
message from what Lakera ever inspects. PII detected purely in the
maskable non-system content was force-blocked instead of masked.

Also fixes pre-existing LIT010 (missing Final) violations in
_has_responses_instructions, _breakdown_has_pii_violation, and
async_post_call_success_hook that the rebase's lowered budget ceiling
now flags.

* chore: retrigger CI (GitHub Actions runner-acquisition failure on prior push)

* fix(guardrails): address maintainer review findings on Lakera v2 advisory mode

- Gate advisory_system_message template validation on on_flagged=
  'inject_system_message', since block/monitor mode never reads it.
- Allow on_flagged='inject_system_message' with mode='during_call' at
  construction/hot-reload instead of rejecting it; async_moderation_hook
  already degrades gracefully (masks if possible, else logs a warning).
- reinitialize_guardrail now restores the previous live instance when the
  new config fails to initialize, instead of leaving the guardrail deleted
  entirely with nothing enforcing it.
- PATCH /guardrails/{id} rolls back the DB write and returns 422 when the
  in-memory sync rejects the new config, instead of persisting a config
  that never actually took effect and returning 200.
- Qualifire now rejects on_flagged values it doesn't implement (only
  Lakera should accept 'inject_system_message'; LitellmParams flattens
  the field across every guardrail config mixin).

* fix(tests): satisfy lint gates and update collateral test for advisory-mode fixes

- Add match= to a too-broad pytest.raises(ValueError), and suppress the
  new TQ008 mocker.patch findings (same pattern already used by sibling
  scenarios in this test).
- test_init_guardrails_v2_skips_invalid_guardrail_instead_of_crashing_boot
  used mode='during_call' + on_flagged='inject_system_message' as its
  invalid-config example; that combination is now accepted, so swap in
  the payload/breakdown-missing case and add a test confirming during_call
  advisory mode constructs successfully.

* docs(CLAUDE.md): auto-capture review learnings without being asked

This session found three real bugs a human maintainer caught after eight
rounds of bot review and live-proxy verification all missed them. Add a
standing instruction to write learnings.md entries the moment a root
cause is understood, in both the repo-wide file and any relevant skill's
own file, instead of relying on being asked.

* feat(guardrails): add scan_raw_request flag so YAML order can't change enforcement

Maintainer finding on BerriAI/litellm#34940: guardrails for the same hook
run sequentially over one shared, progressively-mutated request dict, so
declaring a masking guardrail before a blocking one hides the violation
from it (200 vs 400 depending purely on YAML order).

scan_raw_request opts a guardrail into always evaluating a snapshot taken
before any guardrail in the hook ran, regardless of its declared position.
Same contract as run_in_parallel: block-only, its own mutations discarded.

Verified live: real proxy, real Gemini call, two custom guardrails (a
redactor then a blocker). Same request, same declared order -- without the
flag the blocker never sees the raw secret (200); with it, the blocker
correctly rejects before any provider call (400).

* fix(guardrails): harden scan_raw_request against review findings

- Use safe_deep_copy instead of a bare deepcopy for the raw-request
  snapshot; request payloads commonly carry unpicklable objects (e.g. an
  otel span in metadata), which previously raised on every guarded
  request when tracing was enabled (Bugbot, High).
- Only compute the snapshot when a guardrail actually opted in, and take
  it before _maybe_execute_pipelines runs, so a pipeline-mutated payload
  can't hide a violation from a scan_raw_request guardrail outside the
  pipeline (veria-ai).
- Log a warning when a scan_raw_request guardrail returns a modified
  payload, since that mutation is discarded and the combination is
  otherwise silently exploitable for a masking-capable integration
  misconfigured this way (veria-ai).

* chore(openapi): regenerate lazy snapshot and dashboard schema types

The lazy OpenAPI snapshot (litellm/proxy/_lazy_openapi_snapshot.json) and
the derived dashboard schema.d.ts had drifted stale relative to the
guardrail config model changes across this PR's rounds (advisory mode,
scan_raw_request, and upstream additions picked up by rebasing).
Regenerated via the CI's own documented fix:
  uv run python -m litellm.proxy._lazy_openapi_snapshot
  npm run gen:api (via make check)

* chore(openapi): pick up cache_hit_filter field after rebase

* fix(guardrails): stop scan_raw_request warning from firing on every call

_process_guardrail_callback always returns a dict once a guardrail runs
(mark_pre_call_hook_ran unconditionally stamps bookkeeping metadata), so
comparing the result to non-None warned on every request even when the
guardrail never touched the payload. Compare against a bookkeeping-only
baseline instead, so only an actual content mutation triggers the warning.

* fix(guardrails): make scan_raw_request snapshots independent of safe_memory_mode

safe_deep_copy can return the original object under litellm.safe_memory_mode,
or alias a per-key reference on copy failure. Under that mode, the
scan_raw_request comparison baseline aliased raw_request_snapshot (and
therefore the live request), letting mark_pre_call_hook_ran write a
premature execution marker that a deployment-level guardrail sharing the
same name would read as "already ran" and skip. Also affected the feature's
core isolation guarantee: input_data itself could alias the live request
under the same mode. Replace every scan_raw_request snapshot with
_independent_snapshot, which never returns an alias, only a genuine copy
or None.

* fix(guardrails): gate during_call mixed-violation masking behind an actual PII check

The during_call branch for a mixed violation under on_flagged=inject_system_message
unconditionally masked and reassigned data["messages"], even for a pure
prompt-injection violation with zero PII, unlike async_pre_call_hook which
already gates the same call behind _breakdown_has_pii_violation. The
unconditional reassignment touched shared request state during a hook
documented as racing with the concurrent LLM dispatch, for no reason when
there was nothing to mask.

* fix(guardrails): stop scan_raw_request from silently no-op'ing on real requests

_independent_snapshot did one whole-dict copy.deepcopy and returned None on
any failure. Every real proxy request carries data["litellm_logging_obj"]
(a Logging instance nesting a live OTel span with a real lock) by the time
pre_call_hook runs, which can never be deep-copied, so the snapshot failed
on every real request and silently fell back to the live, unisolated data
with no warning -- defeating the entire feature in production while every
existing test (none of which set litellm_logging_obj) kept passing.

Rework the helper to deep-copy each top-level key independently, falling
back to the original reference only for the specific key that fails, same
crash tolerance as safe_deep_copy's own per-key fallback. It never returns
None now; only the keys scan_raw_request actually depends on (messages/
input, metadata/litellm_metadata) need to be genuinely independent.

* fix(guardrails): block during_call when PII can't be safely masked

Greptile finding (P1, security): async_moderation_hook's inject_system_message
branch had no equivalent to async_pre_call_hook's degrade-to-blocking case for
a PII violation on input that can't be safely masked (e.g. combined
messages+input). It fell through to the advisory no-op branch and let raw,
unredacted PII reach the model with no protection at all. Raising still
blocks the response from reaching the caller even though during_call races
with the LLM dispatch, the same mechanism on_flagged="block" already relies
on for this hook, so add the same block-instead-of-advisory branch pre_call
already has.

* chore(lint): fix LIT002 ceiling after rebase merge conflict resolution

* fix(lint): suppress genuine LIT002 hits instead of padding the ceiling

My earlier rebase conflict resolution for type-discipline-budget.json's
LIT002 limit was too low, then overcorrected by padding it well above the
actual measured count. Root-caused instead: _independent_snapshot and the
PATCH-endpoint rollback path legitimately construct plain, mutable
request-payload/config dicts (matching this file's existing precedent for
the same shape), so suppress those four sites with `# mutable-ok:` rather
than reshaping code that must stay a plain dict by contract. Set the limit
to the exact current measured total; the small remaining gap vs upstream's
own committed ceiling is pre-existing drift in litellm_internal_staging
itself (its own tree already measures over its committed limit), not
attributable to this PR.

* fix(guardrails): stamp live request when a scan_raw_request guardrail runs

_run_sequential_guardrail_callback and _run_parallel_pre_call_guardrails only
called mark_pre_call_hook_ran on throwaway snapshot copies for a
scan_raw_request guardrail, never on the live request returned to the
caller. A later async_pre_call_deployment_hook (router-level guardrail
re-check) reads that marker on live kwargs to decide whether to skip
re-running the same guardrail; since it was never stamped there, the
guardrail ran a second time on live data, doubling the external call and
re-applying whatever scan_raw_request's contract says should be discarded.

* fix(guardrails): revalidate Qualifire's on_flagged on live config reload

on_flagged was validated only in __init__. The base
CustomGuardrail.update_in_memory_litellm_params is a generic setattr loop
with no revalidation, so a live config update (PUT /guardrails/{id}, no
restart) could setattr on_flagged="inject_system_message" onto a running
instance, bypassing the constructor's rejection -- silently blocking every
flagged request under an "advisory" label. Mirrors LakeraAIGuardrail's own
update_in_memory_litellm_params override added earlier in this PR.

* fix(guardrails): honor scan_raw_request for pipeline-managed guardrails

A scan_raw_request=True guardrail that is itself a pipeline step never saw
raw_request_snapshot: PipelineExecutor.execute_steps had no way to receive
it, and pipeline-managed guardrails are fully excluded from the normal
sequential/parallel loops that implement the flag. Such a guardrail silently
evaluated whatever an earlier pass_data step in the same pipeline had
already rewritten, defeating the flag for pipeline-managed guardrails.

Moves the snapshot helper (renamed independent_snapshot) from proxy/utils.py
to litellm_core_utils/core_helpers.py so pipeline_executor.py can use the
same independent-copy logic without a circular import, threads
raw_request_snapshot through _maybe_execute_pipelines and
PipelineExecutor.execute_steps/_run_step, and discards a scan_raw_request
step's returned data the same way the sequential/parallel loops already do.

* chore(openapi): pick up upstream drift after rebase onto litellm_internal_staging

* fix(guardrails): stop attempting PII masking during during_call in Lakera v2

Greptile finding (P1, security): during_call runs concurrently with the LLM
dispatch. In the common path, the provider call already binds its messages
kwarg before this guardrail's coroutine gets a chance to run, let alone
before its own network round trip to Lakera completes -- masking here can
never reliably reach the outgoing request, and _apply_redacted_messages_back_
preserving_fields reassigns to a new list object rather than mutating in
place, so even winning the race wouldn't help. This affected both the
PII-only and mixed-violation masking branches, all added in this same PR.

Remove masking from async_moderation_hook entirely and let PII violations
fall through to the normal on_flagged branching: block under "block" or
"inject_system_message" (extending the existing multimodal-only block to
cover every PII case, since masking is proven non-functional regardless of
input shape), log-and-allow under "monitor" -- consistent with how every
other violation type in this hook is already handled.

---------

Co-authored-by: Deepanshu <deepanshu.lulla@alpha-sense.com>
2026-08-28 14:13:49 -07:00
..
__init__.py [Feat] New LiteLLM Policy engine - create policies to manage guardrails, conditions - permissions per Key, Team (#19612) 2026-01-22 19:49:53 -08:00
test_attachment_registry.py fix(policy_engine): only hide config policies behind production DB versions in policies list 2026-07-30 15:33:52 -07:00
test_condition_evaluator.py style: run black formatter on files from main merge 2026-04-17 13:02:59 -07:00
test_pipeline_executor.py feat(guardrails): add Lakera v2 skip-message honoring and advisory (inject_system_message) mode (#34940) 2026-08-28 14:13:49 -07:00
test_policy_engine_endpoints.py fix(policy_engine): decide config policy suppression from fresh db query only 2026-07-30 16:01:57 -07:00
test_policy_matcher.py style: run black formatter on files from main merge 2026-04-17 13:02:59 -07:00
test_policy_resolver.py style: run black formatter on files from main merge 2026-04-17 13:02:59 -07:00
test_policy_validator.py fix(policies): reject non-existent team/key/model scope entries on attachment create (#32131) 2026-07-04 11:58:29 -07:00
test_policy_versioning.py test: require a match= on broad pytest.raises, and drop duplicate parametrize cases (#37769) 2026-08-20 20:24:49 -07:00
test_policy_versioning_e2e.py style: run black formatter on files from main merge 2026-04-17 13:02:59 -07:00