diff --git a/.github/workflows/cve-scan.yml b/.github/workflows/cve-scan.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..d3cddf4008
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+++ b/.github/workflows/cve-scan.yml
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+name: CVE Scan
+
+# D95 (pre-11-02 launch hardening). Three guards, each a separate job so its
+# permissions are exactly what that path needs:
+#  - pr-gate (pull_request): fail only on a NEWLY-INTRODUCED fixable critical
+#    CVE — the PR head is diffed against its base branch, so a pre-existing
+#    critical in a lockfile does not fail unrelated PRs. `--ignore-unfixed`
+#    keeps the unfixable base-OS wall out of the gate. contents:read only.
+#  - nightly-deps (schedule/dispatch): full dependency scan, SARIF to the
+#    Security tab. contents:read + security-events:write.
+#  - images (schedule/dispatch): image scan of the three live images at the
+#    tag the cluster is actually running. A pull or scan failure fails the job
+#    (no silent green). contents:read + id-token:write (WIF).
+#
+# Supply chain: Trivy runs as its official image pinned by DIGEST (immutable,
+# content-addressed) rather than a mutable tag or the setup-trivy binary
+# installer — directly in response to the March 2026 trivy-action/setup-trivy
+# tag-poisoning compromise (GHSA-69fq-xp46-6x23), where version TAGS were
+# force-pushed to malicious commits and Docker Hub tags 0.69.5/0.69.6 were
+# attacker-pushed. A sha256 digest cannot be re-pointed, so it is immune to
+# that class of attack. 0.76.1 is a current post-remediation release pulled
+# from GHCR (GitHub immutable releases). Every other third-party action is
+# pinned to a full commit SHA. Registry host is assembled from REGION + the
+# DEV_GCP_PROJECT_ID secret so no project identifier is committed to this
+# public repo.
+
+on:
+  pull_request:
+  schedule:
+    - cron: '17 9 * * *'   # 09:17 UTC nightly
+  workflow_dispatch:
+    inputs:
+      image_tag:
+        description: 'Image tag to scan (default: the tag the cluster is running)'
+        required: false
+
+# No workflow-level permissions — each job declares only what it needs.
+permissions: {}
+
+concurrency:
+  group: cve-scan-${{ github.ref }}
+  cancel-in-progress: true
+
+env:
+  # Trivy 0.76.1, GHCR, pinned by digest — see the supply-chain note above.
+  TRIVY_IMG: 'ghcr.io/aquasecurity/trivy@sha256:790fd66d1697395d8693d1acaa1ea702406a20f109b6fc7bac8db623eca6c06c'
+  REGION: us-central1
+  CLUSTER: commonly-dev
+
+jobs:
+  pr-gate:
+    name: PR gate — newly-introduced fixable criticals
+    if: github.event_name == 'pull_request'
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    permissions:
+      contents: read
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@11d5960a326750d5838078e36cf38b85af677262  # v4
+        with:
+          fetch-depth: 0        # need base history for the diff
+      - name: Diff fixable criticals against base
+        env:
+          BASE_SHA: ${{ github.event.pull_request.base.sha }}
+          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}   # raises Trivy DB pull rate limit
+        run: |
+          set -euo pipefail
+          # Fail open on a tool error (checkout, Trivy DB fetch, image pull,
+          # docker, the diff itself), fail closed only on a real finding: an
+          # outage must not red every PR.
+          tool_error() { echo "::warning::CVE gate skipped: $1"; exit 0; }
+          git worktree add -q /tmp/base "$BASE_SHA" || tool_error "could not check out base $BASE_SHA"
+          mkdir -p /tmp/out
+          scan() {  # $1 = host dir to scan, $2 = output filename under /tmp/out
+            docker run --rm -e GITHUB_TOKEN -v "$1":/scan:ro -v /tmp/out:/out \
+              "$TRIVY_IMG" fs --scanners vuln --severity CRITICAL --ignore-unfixed \
+              --quiet --format json -o "/out/$2" /scan
+          }
+          ids() { python3 -c "import json,sys;d=json.load(open(sys.argv[1]));print('\n'.join(sorted({v['VulnerabilityID']+'|'+v.get('PkgName','') for r in d.get('Results') or [] for v in r.get('Vulnerabilities') or []})))" "$1"; }
+          echo "scanning PR head"; scan "$PWD" head.json || tool_error "scan of the PR head failed"
+          echo "scanning base $BASE_SHA"; scan /tmp/base base.json || tool_error "scan of base failed"
+          export LC_ALL=C   # comm and sort must agree on order, whatever the runner locale
+          ids /tmp/out/head.json | sort > head.ids || tool_error "could not read the head scan"
+          ids /tmp/out/base.json | sort > base.ids || tool_error "could not read the base scan"
+          new=$(comm -23 head.ids base.ids) || tool_error "could not compare the scans"
+          if [ -n "$new" ]; then
+            echo "::error::PR introduces fixable CRITICAL CVE(s) not on base:"; echo "$new"
+            exit 1
+          fi
+          echo "No newly-introduced fixable critical CVEs."
+
+  nightly-deps:
+    name: Nightly dependency scan (SARIF)
+    if: github.event_name != 'pull_request'
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    permissions:
+      contents: read
+      security-events: write
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@11d5960a326750d5838078e36cf38b85af677262  # v4
+      - name: Dep scan (SARIF)
+        env:
+          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
+        run: |
+          set -euo pipefail
+          mkdir -p /tmp/out
+          docker run --rm -e GITHUB_TOKEN -v "$PWD":/scan:ro -v /tmp/out:/out \
+            "$TRIVY_IMG" fs --scanners vuln --severity CRITICAL,HIGH --ignore-unfixed \
+            --quiet --format sarif -o /out/trivy-fs.sarif /scan
+          cp /tmp/out/trivy-fs.sarif trivy-fs.sarif
+      - name: Upload SARIF
+        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@4bfa242aa49c5f7c6770b98670d354a7dfac05f8  # v3
+        with:
+          sarif_file: trivy-fs.sarif
+          category: trivy-fs
+
+  images:
+    name: Live image scan (nightly)
+    if: github.event_name != 'pull_request'
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    permissions:
+      contents: read
+      id-token: write          # WIF only
+    steps:
+      - name: Authenticate to Google Cloud (WIF)
+        uses: google-github-actions/auth@c200f3691d83b41bf9bbd8638997a462592937ed  # v2
+        with:
+          workload_identity_provider: ${{ secrets.WIF_PROVIDER }}
+          service_account: ${{ secrets.WIF_SERVICE_ACCOUNT }}
+      - uses: google-github-actions/setup-gcloud@e427ad8a34f8676edf47cf7d7925499adf3eb74f  # v2
+      - name: Get GKE credentials
+        uses: google-github-actions/get-gke-credentials@64bc7249bbcf78056bb92f14d3cedc2da193946c  # v2
+        with:
+          cluster_name: ${{ env.CLUSTER }}
+          location: ${{ env.REGION }}
+      - name: Scan live images
+        env:
+          PROJECT_ID: ${{ secrets.DEV_GCP_PROJECT_ID }}
+          TAG_INPUT: ${{ github.event.inputs.image_tag }}
+          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
+        run: |
+          set -euo pipefail
+          REG="${REGION}-docker.pkg.dev/${PROJECT_ID}/docker"
+          if [ -n "${TAG_INPUT}" ]; then
+            TAG="${TAG_INPUT}"
+          else
+            img=$(kubectl get deploy backend -n "${CLUSTER}" -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.containers[0].image}')
+            TAG="${img##*:}"
+          fi
+          [ -n "${TAG}" ] || { echo "::error::could not resolve an image tag"; exit 1; }
+          # AR pull creds for Trivy (runs in a container, so gcloud cred-helper
+          # is not reachable): username/password env, password kept off argv.
+          TRIVY_USERNAME=oauth2accesstoken
+          TRIVY_PASSWORD=$(gcloud auth print-access-token)
+          export TRIVY_USERNAME TRIVY_PASSWORD
+          mkdir -p /tmp/out
+          echo "## CVE image scan — tag \`${TAG}\`" >> "$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY"
+          echo "| image | CRIT (fixable) | HIGH (fixable) |" >> "$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY"
+          echo "|---|---|---|" >> "$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY"
+          fail=0
+          for n in commonly-backend commonly-bot commonly-frontend; do
+            img="${REG}/${n}:${TAG}"
+            if ! docker run --rm -e GITHUB_TOKEN -e TRIVY_USERNAME -e TRIVY_PASSWORD \
+              -v /tmp/out:/out "$TRIVY_IMG" image --scanners vuln --ignore-unfixed \
+              --severity CRITICAL,HIGH --quiet --format json -o "/out/${n}.json" "$img"; then
+              echo "| ${n} | pull/scan FAILED | - |" >> "$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY"
+              fail=1; continue
+            fi
+            crit=$(python3 -c "import json;d=json.load(open('/tmp/out/${n}.json'));print(sum(1 for r in d.get('Results') or [] for v in r.get('Vulnerabilities') or [] if v.get('Severity')=='CRITICAL'))")
+            high=$(python3 -c "import json;d=json.load(open('/tmp/out/${n}.json'));print(sum(1 for r in d.get('Results') or [] for v in r.get('Vulnerabilities') or [] if v.get('Severity')=='HIGH'))")
+            echo "| ${n} | ${crit} | ${high} |" >> "$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY"
+            [ "${crit}" -gt 0 ] && fail=1
+          done
+          [ "${fail}" = 0 ] || { echo "::error::a live image failed to scan or has a fixable critical CVE"; exit 1; }
diff --git a/.trivyignore b/.trivyignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..cd97993d69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.trivyignore
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# Accepted / deferred CVEs for the CVE Scan gate (D95). Review before 11-02.
+# The gate runs with --ignore-unfixed, so upstream-unfixed CVEs already do not
+# fire; these lines document the notable ones found in the 2026-10-26 baseline
+# so a future fix (a new base image) is a conscious removal, not a surprise.
+#
+# backend image, no upstream fix as of 2026-10-26:
+CVE-2026-58016   # libglib2.0 — no fixed version published
+CVE-2023-6879    # libaom3 — no fixed version published