How we review apps before they list
The review pipeline every app goes through, and why it exists
No app lists on Panoply without passing review. Not the first version, not an update, not an app from an established creator. This page is what happens between submitting and going live.
Why there's a review at all
Apps on Panoply are hosted and run in a buyer's browser. A malicious app could try to steal data or abuse the buyer's machine. Buyers can't read the source before buying — so somebody has to, and it can't be the person selling it.
The pipeline
1. Automated security scan
Your source is scanned for known-dangerous patterns. This is mechanical and fast: it looks for the categories in What review checks for and produces findings with severities.
2. Safety review
Marcus, Panoply's Head of Safety & Governance, reviews the scan output and the app itself, and writes a decision. The scan finds things; the review decides what they mean. A scan finding isn't automatically a rejection, and a clean scan isn't automatically an approval.
3. Human confirmation
A human confirms the decision before anything changes state.
4. Deploy
On approval, your app is built and deployed to <slug>.panop.ly and the listing goes live.
How long it takes
Review is a queue with people in it, so it isn't instant. While your app is pending, the submission page says so. There's nothing to poll and nothing you need to do — you'll see the status change.
What buyers see
The outcome is published on your listing: severity counts, the overall recommendation, the reviewer's written note, and when it was reviewed.
What is not published is the machinery — the specific rules that fired, the patterns they matched, or the scoring. That's deliberate. Publishing the detection rules would tell a bad actor exactly what to avoid, which would make the review worth less to everyone.
Updates are re-reviewed
An update goes through the same pipeline. Your live version stays up while the update is in review, so a rejected update never takes your app offline. See Update or unpublish an app.
If you're rejected
You're told why. Fix it and resubmit — rejections aren't permanent and don't count against you. If you think the call was wrong, see Report an app or appeal a decision.