You built something. Tests pass. You're days from mainnet. Before you either skip security entirely (please don't) or spend weeks lining up a full audit, here's a self-check you can run in 20 minutes that catches the mistakes I see most often in first-time deployments.

I run security reviews for small and new protocols, and the same handful of issues come up again and again. None of these need a tool — just your eyes and this list.

1. Who can call what?

Open every external/public function that moves funds, mints, pauses, or upgrades. For each, ask: should a random address be able to call this? If not — is there an onlyOwner / onlyRole / require(msg.sender == ...) guarding it, in the function itself or in every internal function it calls?

The classic bug isn't a missing modifier. It's a function that looks unguarded but delegates to a guarded internal one (fine), or one that looks guarded but the guard is in a branch a caller can skip (not fine). Trace the call, don't trust the signature.