HEAD-TO-HEAD COMPARISON

Heeler vs ArmorCode.

Agentic Development Security, built for the AI SDLC — versus ArmorCode, an ASPM aggregation and orchestration platform. Heeler is one context engine that unifies code, dependencies, runtime, and cloud — detecting, fixing with CI-validated PRs, and observing runtime itself; ArmorCode orchestrates the scanners you already own. Here's where Heeler advances and what a native engine adds under an aggregation layer.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Heeler is the engine; ArmorCode is the conductor.

Heeler is one context engine that unifies code, dependencies, runtime, and cloud — it detects (SAST/SCA/secrets), fixes with CI-repaired validated PRs, and prioritizes on runtime it observes itself: capabilities ArmorCode ingests or orchestrates rather than performs.

ArmorCode is scannerless by design — it unifies, prioritizes, and orchestrates findings from 350+ tools, with enterprise SLA and compliance program management. Many teams run both.

THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE

Heeler is the engine that detects and fixes. ArmorCode unifies the scanners you own.

Both put a risk graph and automated workflows at the center. The difference is where the findings and the fixes come from: Heeler is one context engine that produces the detections itself, computes exposure from the runtime and cloud it observes as a single model, and delivers a fix proven green in your CI; ArmorCode ingests other tools' detections and orchestrates the fix to a human.

ARMORCODE

ASPM aggregation & orchestration

Scannerless by design — unify, prioritize, orchestrate.

→Ingests, correlates, and deduplicates findings from 350+ tools across apps, code, cloud, and AI into one Context Risk Graph
→Risk-based prioritization (CVSS/EPSS/KEV/threat-intel/business-context + correlated reachability, attack paths), patented org-context prioritization and SLA release gating
→Remediation orchestration — owner attribution, root-cause ticket grouping, Jira/ServiceNow/Azure routing, no-code Runbooks, Anya agents for analysis + guidance; compliance evidence + audit trails
→Doesn't detect, doesn't write/validate code fixes, and doesn't observe runtime natively (ingests from CNAPP/CSPM); no source-based endpoint discovery, no agent-file governance

HEELER

Modeled around the running service

Prevent, Fix, and Operate on one runtime-aware model.

→One context engine across six dimensions (code, cloud/runtime, business, ownership, threat, agent), sensor-less and read-only — runtime exposure is a native input
→Its own detection — SAST, build-graph SCA (14 ecosystems), validated secrets, agent-file governance — plus an MCP server, Agent Skills, and a CLI
→Prioritizes by runtime reachability and internet exposure; remediation is built in a sandbox and repaired in your CI until green
→Guardrails gate new risk at the PR; workflows operate to a runtime-verified close with per-finding SLOs

VERDICT FRAMEWORK

Side-by-side, with a verdict per row.

Five states. Heeler-leaning where Heeler advances; explicit when ArmorCode leads; honest about parity.

●

Heeler advantage

Heeler delivers a capability ArmorCode doesn't, or in a way that changes outcomes.

◐

Heeler edge

Both deliver the capability. Heeler's implementation is materially better on a verifiable dimension.

✓

Parity

Both products deliver the capability comparably.

◑

ArmorCode edge

Both deliver the capability. ArmorCode's implementation leads on a verifiable dimension.

○

ArmorCode advantage

Explicit signal that ArmorCode leads on this row.

Scorecard — 24 capabilities, scoped to code security

Section	● Heeler advantage	◐ Heeler edge	✓ Parity	◑ ArmorCode edge	○ ArmorCode advantage
Prevent	3	1	0	0	0
Fix	3	1	0	0	0
Operate	11	1	2	1	1
Total	17	3	2	1	1

Capability	Heeler	ArmorCode	Verdict
Prevent · stop risk before and as it enters
Security at AI code generation	Heeler's MCP server hands the coding agent its runtime-aware context as it writes — 30+ read-only tools exposing live SAST, SCA, and secrets findings, endpoint exposure, runtime and deployment risk, guardrail status, and SLO pressure, plus named secure-development prompts — and can trigger Heeler's validated remediation with the right scope. Drop-in Agent Skills and the CLI cover the same surface locally, for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and VS Code.	ArmorCode's MCP server exposes its Anya agents and platform data so teams can build and invoke custom agents, and its AI Exposure Management governs AI adoption (inventorying models, agents, APIs, and MCP servers). It operates at the platform layer over ingested findings — it doesn't sit with the coding agent to secure code as it's written, or trigger a validated fix.	●Heeler advantage
CLI / local developer scanning	The heelercli runs local scans across the full surface — SAST, SCA, secrets (with live validation), license, and malicious-package checks — with non-zero exit for pre-commit and CI, SARIF output, and policy-as-code; plus IDE reach through the MCP server.	ArmorCode is a cloud aggregation platform, scannerless by design — there is no local developer scan of its own. Developers receive consolidated, owner-routed tickets and Anya's guidance; any local scanning is done by the third-party tools ArmorCode ingests.	●Heeler advantage
PR guardrails & release gating	Block / Warn / Observe guardrails post a native status check on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps and gate PRs on new dependency vulnerabilities, dependency hygiene, SAST, secrets, and SLO breaches — scoped by runtime context (enforce only on Tier-1, production, or internet-facing services) — with a validated fix committed straight into the PR branch. Block relies on SCM branch protection to enforce.	ArmorCode's patented SLA-based release gating fails a CI/CD build on three tiers — vulnerability-count thresholds, whether the designated scanners actually ran, and risk/compliance parameters (OWASP Top 10, CWE Top 25, PCI, HIPAA, ASVS) — a program-level gate. It gates on findings ingested from your tools and on tool execution, isn't scoped by observed runtime exposure, and ships no fix into the PR.	◐Heeler edge
IaC pull-request guardrails	Heeler evaluates the Infrastructure-as-Code findings introduced by a pull request instead of failing a change because of pre-existing repository debt. It returns a native source-control check controlled by program policy: Observe records the violations and the decision that would have been made, Warn reports them without preventing merge, and Block fails the check so repository rules can require it. The same policy can move from observation to enforcement without creating separate rules or CI logic.	No documented capability.	●Heeler advantage
Fix · resolve findings — code and dependencies
SAST autofix	Deterministic, strategy-matched transforms (Parameterize / Escape / Allowlist / Path-Normalize) anchored to the exact source-to-sink flow, precomputed per finding on every scan, confidence- and effort-scored, and delivered as PRs validated the same way as dependency fixes (sandbox build + CI repair). Findings needing an architectural change get written guidance instead.	ArmorCode's Anya Remediation Agent generates code-aware remediation guidance for a finding or a group of findings and routes a consolidated ticket to the owning developer; the docs are explicit that it “does not take the developer out of the loop.” Writing the actual code fix is the developer's job — or a separate ingested tool (e.g. Mobb) — not something ArmorCode produces and validates.	●Heeler advantage
SCA autofix (upgrades)	Deterministic, multi-signal upgrade selection over the resolved graph — Heeler picks the version that clears the most risk with the least disruption (no new known vulnerabilities, proven adoption, cleared minimum-age cooldown), and for transitive vulns finds the smallest bump to the direct ancestor you control (npm, Go, Cargo). Every fix is built in a sandbox and repaired through your CI until green before merge. Auto-fixable across Java, Go, JavaScript, Python, and C#.	ArmorCode orchestrates dependency remediation — grouping findings by root cause, attributing an owner, and routing a ticket — and can hand off the actual upgrade to an ingested code-remediation integration. It doesn't compute the upgrade, open a version-bump PR, or build and test the change itself.	●Heeler advantage
Validated, merge-ready fixes (build + CI repair)	Heeler validates every fix twice: a real build in an isolated sandbox with your project's toolchain before the PR (mvn/Gradle, npm/pnpm/Yarn, pip/uv/Poetry, go build, dotnet), then — once the PR is open — it runs your CI and repairs its own build/test failures with up to five follow-up commits until green, or hands off with an explanation. Draft PR if the sandbox build didn't pass; human review, no auto-merge.	ArmorCode writes, builds, and tests no code. It is a remediation-orchestration platform: it consolidates and routes work, tracks SLAs, and provides context and guidance, with the fix and its validation left to the developer or an ingested tool. There is no sandbox build or CI-repair loop.	●Heeler advantage
Policy-managed remediation memories	Heeler stores administrator-approved remediation guidance as memories in program policy and scopes each memory to an organization or repository. On later remediation runs, the Remediation Agent retrieves the applicable memories and applies the repository’s conventions and constraints when generating a fix. The guidance is centrally governed and reusable; it is not a one-off prompt, a triage-suppression rule, or generic model memory.	ArmorCode Anya uses retrieval-augmented generation, organizational knowledge, and continuous learning for triage and remediation. Its public material does not describe administrator-managed memories as scoped program-policy objects applied by a fixing agent.	◐Heeler edge
Operate · detect, prioritize, and run the program
SAST detection	Path-aware, interprocedural source-to-sink taint analysis across functions and files — plus structural (Graphscan) and heuristic methods — from Heeler's own engine, with detection rules adapted per codebase, automatic reachability/exposure triage, and step-by-step data-flow proof.	Not offered. ArmorCode is scannerless by design — it has no SAST engine of its own. It ingests SAST findings from the tools you already run (Semgrep, Checkmarx, Fortify, Veracode, and the like) and normalizes them into one record.	●Heeler advantage
Dependency vulnerability (CVE) detection	Build-graph SCA across 14 ecosystems that resolves the full direct-and-transitive graph itself, from your manifests and lockfiles — using a committed lockfile when present, without requiring one, and no build change — covering first-party and bundled dependencies too, matched with CVSS, EPSS, and known-exploited signals. GitHub Actions and reusable workflows are a first-class dependency ecosystem, scanned like any other.	Not offered as native detection. ArmorCode ingests SCA and infrastructure CVE findings from your existing scanners across domains and enriches them with EPSS, CISA KEV, and threat intelligence — it unifies and scores detections rather than producing them.	●Heeler advantage
Secrets detection & validation	First-class secrets: full git-history scanning across all branches with commit attribution, active live validation (read-only calls to the issuing provider; an active secret is weighted as maximal impact), offline structural validation, and 700+ rules across 20+ languages; contained and gated at the PR.	Not offered. ArmorCode ingests and normalizes secrets findings from the secrets scanners you run (GitGuardian and others); it has no native secrets-detection engine and no live validation of its own.	●Heeler advantage
Dependency reachability & noise reduction	Heeler treats a dependency vuln as reachable only when two independent checks agree: runtime reachability (the library is loaded in a running deployment) and static call-graph reachability to the vulnerable functions across six ecosystems (Go, Java, Python, JS/TS, Rust, Ruby). Unreachable findings are auto-mitigated; elsewhere it uses runtime reachability and errs toward reachable.	ArmorCode derives reachability by correlating signals across ingested layers — code (SCA/SAST), infrastructure (container/cloud), and network — to judge whether an exposure is callable, reachable, and internet-facing, and reduces noise by deduplicating across tools (a claimed up-to-90% reduction). It correlates reachability from the tools you feed it rather than computing it natively from your code and runtime.	◐Heeler edge
Multi-tool, cross-domain aggregation & normalization	Heeler is its own detection-and-fix engine, focused on code security plus the cloud/runtime context of the services that code deploys to — not an aggregator of third-party scanners, and not an enterprise-wide vulnerability-management platform unifying standalone infrastructure, network, and endpoint findings. It exports findings (SARIF, API) and can feed a system of record, but unifying and deduplicating many other vendors' tools across every domain is not its purpose.	ArmorCode's design center: 350+ out-of-the-box integrations across 30+ tool categories, with AI-driven correlation that deduplicates and normalizes disparate findings into a single enriched record — spanning applications, code, cloud, infrastructure, containers, and network. It ingests from infra/network scanners (Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7, Tenable), CNAPP/CSPM (Wiz, Prisma, Orca, Lacework), pentest, and XDR, so one program spans every domain, not just code. Vendor-agnostic — the “conductor of the symphony of scanning tools.”	○ArmorCode advantage
Risk-based prioritization	Heeler Risk (Urgent / Plan / Defer) ranks SAST and SCA findings by real exposure. For SCA, a vuln must clear a gate: reachable (runtime-loaded, plus a call-graph path where supported) AND internet-exposed (an active deployment on internet-reachable compute) AND not mitigated — fail any and it Defers, however high the CVSS. For SAST, exposure is path-driven from an internet-facing entry point, behind auth, touching sensitive data. Both are weighted by service tier and threat (KEV/EPSS; CWE class), with a per-finding SLO, re-scored continuously.	ArmorCode's Adaptive Risk Scoring correlates CVSS, EPSS, CISA KEV, proprietary threat intelligence, business context (asset criticality, data classification, internet-facing), and correlated reachability into one dynamic score across every domain, surfacing exploitability clusters, vulnerability chains, and attack paths — with patented organizational-context prioritization. A cross-domain prioritization engine, computed over ingested signals.	✓Parity
Cloud, runtime & business context	Heeler builds its own model of where code runs across AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, and Vercel — containers, VMs, and serverless fingerprinted, each deployment mapped to the exact running changeset, internet-accessibility auto-detected, service tier (1–4) and prod/non-prod classified, service-to-service and identity edges resolved, and ownership resolved to the owning team (Tech Lead / Security Lead) — all read-only and sensor-less. This context is what makes exposure, prioritization, and routing real.	ArmorCode's Context Risk Graph carries cloud resources, network topology, identities, business context, and ownership — but it correlates them from ingested data: cloud and runtime signals come from the CNAPP/CSPM tools you connect (Wiz, Prisma, Orca, and the like), not from ArmorCode observing runtime itself. Its “cloud-to-code correlation” traces ingested runtime findings back to source rather than building the deployment model.	●Heeler advantage
Endpoint & API attack-surface discovery	Heeler enumerates every endpoint from source — REST, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, and WebSocket, plus the MCP tools/resources/prompts and Spring Boot actuator routes your code exposes — capturing each one's authentication posture and computing internet-accessibility from deployment topology, so your externally reachable, unauthenticated surface is inventoried with no runtime agents or traffic capture.	ArmorCode does “hidden asset discovery,” identifying APIs, containers, and infrastructure defined within code repositories or deployed outside them. It doesn't parse source to enumerate every route and handler with its authentication posture and internet-accessibility, and API-security findings otherwise come from ingested tools.	●Heeler advantage
Agent-file detection & governance	Heeler inspects pull-request changes to agent instructions, skill files, hooks, subagents, and MCP configuration, including CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, and SKILL.md. It combines deterministic checks, LLM-based intent analysis, and analysis of external references to identify prompt injection, tool poisoning, unsafe command execution, secret access or exfiltration, permission bypass, and related agent-control risks. The evidence and verdict are returned through Observe, Warn, or Block before the changed artifact is trusted by coding agents.	No documented capability.	●Heeler advantage
Automated response workflows & routing	A standing when-this-then-that engine across the whole estate: one trigger (new finding, fix available, compromised dependency, new secret, at-risk agent file, SLO expiring, PR merged with unresolved guardrail violations) → AND-combined conditions → up to three chained actions that share context. Actions span messaging (Slack/Teams/Google Chat/email), ticketing (Jira/Linear/GitHub/Shortcut, de-duplicated), and domain actions (Fix with Heeler Agent, Update SLO Override, Generate SBOM, Webhook), routed to the owning team, with a plain-English builder.	Remediation orchestration is ArmorCode's primary focus: owner attribution from repository metadata, root-cause ticket grouping (one ticket instead of 200), no-code Runbooks, extensive ServiceNow VR/AVR/CVR, and Jira/Azure Boards routing — across every ingested tool and domain, with automated SLAs. Wide-ranging orchestration across ingested tools; the remediation action it routes is a ticket and guidance rather than a native validated fix.	✓Parity
Compliance program management & audit evidence	Heeler produces compliance evidence continuously, as a byproduct of securing your code, so an audit becomes an export rather than a scramble: an auditor-ready pack assembled on demand from live data — portfolio posture and trend, SLO attainment (a defined-and-met remediation timeline, exactly what SOC 2 looks for), allow/deny license-policy control enforced at the PR, and per-application CycloneDX SBOMs — all backed by a full Audit Log that records every configuration, policy, role, and connection change, and every triggered fix, with the user, timestamp, source IP, and a redacted request body. Code-security evidence and change accountability, rather than a multi-framework GRC control-mapping suite.	ArmorCode offers enterprise SLA and compliance program management: hierarchical, enforceable SLAs, patented SLA-based release gating, and a single system of record for controls and evidence across CRA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, OWASP, and CWE — with automated evidence collection, audit-ready reports, exception governance, and board-level dashboards.	◑ArmorCode edge
SLOs & runtime-verified closure	Every tracked finding under an SLO policy carries a per-band (Urgent / Plan / Defer) SLO clock; SLO-expiring events trigger workflows, and an Update SLO Override action can extend a due date automatically. Findings run Active → Fixed → Deployed, and closure is runtime-verified — a fix reaches Deployed only once every running deployment confirms the vulnerability is actually gone, not merely merged.	ArmorCode tracks SLAs and warns against “SLA theater” — a closed ticket that isn't a closed exposure — and calls for “validated risk reduction” confirming fixes held up through redeployment. But it specifies no mechanism for that verification; closure in practice is a ticket state or a re-scan, not confirmation against a running deployment.	●Heeler advantage
Sensitive-data inventory	Heeler analyzes application source to identify the sensitive data types handled by the code and records them in the application catalog. Each data type is connected to the repositories, services, APIs, and owning teams that process it, together with business criticality and available deployment or exposure context. A reviewer can move from a data type to the applications and interfaces that handle it and evaluate that data-handling risk with the same ownership and runtime context used for other application-security findings.	No documented capability.	●Heeler advantage
Infrastructure-as-Code findings	Heeler evaluates Infrastructure-as-Code against policy and creates a persistent finding for each violation. The finding retains the affected file or infrastructure resource and links it to the repository, application, owning team, business criticality, and any connected cloud or runtime object. The same finding is used for prioritization, lifecycle tracking, workflow routing, pull-request guardrails, and remediation instead of remaining a one-time CI scanner result.	No documented capability.	●Heeler advantage
GitHub audit-log behavioral checks	Heeler ingests the GitHub organization audit log for each connected organization and evaluates defined patterns across the resulting source-control events. A match creates a native finding that retains the actor, action, affected repository or organization, timestamp, and matching event context. The finding enters Heeler’s ownership, prioritization, investigation, workflow, and lifecycle tracking rather than remaining a searchable or exported log event.	No documented capability.	●Heeler advantage
OpenSSF Scorecard repository health	Heeler records the repository’s OpenSSF Scorecard result and each check outcome on the repository object in the catalog. The same repository view links the signal to applications, ownership, vulnerabilities, dependency health, provenance, deployment, and exposure context. Teams can inspect which Scorecard checks reduced the result and evaluate repository-maintenance risk in relation to the applications that use the repository instead of treating the score as an external badge.	No documented capability.	●Heeler advantage

WHERE HEELER ADVANCES

Where a native engine beats an aggregation layer.

Each is a capability an aggregator ingests or orchestrates rather than performs — and each maps back to Heeler's one context engine, code to cloud.

Detection you own, not detection you rent

ArmorCode is scannerless by design — it unifies findings from the scanners you already run, so its coverage, accuracy, and language support are only ever as good as those tools, and you keep paying for every one of them. Heeler brings its own detection — interprocedural SAST, build-graph SCA across 14 ecosystems, validated secrets, agent-file governance — so a new language or a coverage gap doesn't mean buying another scanner to feed the aggregator.

Fixes that build and pass CI, not tickets and guidance

ArmorCode's Anya Remediation Agent generates code-aware guidance and routes a consolidated ticket to the owner; the actual fix is the developer's job, or a separate ingested tool. Heeler writes the fix, builds it in a sandbox, and repairs its own CI failures until green — for code and dependencies — before a human merges it. Orchestrating a fix to a person is not the same as delivering one proven to build and pass tests.

Runtime context observed, not correlated from other tools' feeds

ArmorCode's Context Risk Graph spans many domains, but its cloud, runtime, and reachability signals are ingested and correlated from the CNAPP, SCA, and network tools you feed it — the picture is only as complete as those feeds. Heeler observes runtime itself, sensor-less: deployment-to-changeset mapping, internet-accessibility, service tier, and reachability computed natively — ground truth, not inference.

Runtime-verified closure, not SLA theater

ArmorCode warns against “SLA theater” — a closed ticket that isn't a closed exposure — and calls for validated risk reduction, but specifies no mechanism for it. Heeler moves findings Active → Fixed → Deployed and closes only when the running deployment confirms the vulnerability is actually gone. It is the mechanism ArmorCode names as the goal.

Built for the AI SDLC, end to end

Heeler hands the coding agent live, runtime-aware context through an MCP server as it writes, discovers your endpoint and API attack surface from source, and governs the agent-instruction files that now steer your code — scoring CLAUDE.md / .mcp.json / skills for malicious intent. ArmorCode governs AI adoption (shadow-AI inventory) and exposes its platform via an MCP server, but it doesn't secure code at generation, map the source-level attack surface, or vet agent files. Heeler runs the whole detect-fix-operate loop natively, at machine speed.

See Heeler on your codebase.

A demo runs Heeler against your real repos and cloud — native detection across the surface, the runtime map, the prioritization, the validated remediation PRs, and the agent-file catalog. If ArmorCode is unifying your scanners today, we'll show what a native engine underneath adds — detection you own, fixes that build and pass CI, and closure verified in production.

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