> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tess.im/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Secure Development

**The platform evolves continuously.** To keep security and stability intact, every relevant change follows a mandatory cycle of proposal, human review, automated validation, and authorized release.

## Change cycle

<Steps>
  <Step title="Propose">
    The change is described with its goal and expected impact — a fix, improvement, or new capability — before any deployment.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Review">
    Another engineer reviews what will change. The goal is to catch logic errors, security risks, and side effects before the change moves forward.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Validate">
    Automated pipelines run tests and quality checks. Failures block the path until they are resolved.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Publish">
    Only changes that passed review and validation are deployed to the environment that serves customers. Changes outside this path do not reach production.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Additional protections

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Secret protection">
    Credentials, keys, and integration secrets are not embedded in source code. They are managed through separate mechanisms, with access limited to people and systems that truly need them.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Third-party components">
    Libraries and dependencies are monitored for known vulnerabilities. Findings are prioritized by severity and fixed according to internal remediation timelines — reducing inherited supply-chain risk.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

<Note>
  This process exists so innovation and fixes can ship without giving up review, traceability, and barriers against unauthorized changes.
</Note>

## Related

* [Operations and Detection](/Operations-Detection)
* [Infrastructure](/Infrastructure)
* [Tess Commitments](/Tess-Commitments)