BC skill-pre-install-scanner
Pre-install safety check for ClawHub skills — scans for the 3 highest-risk signals before anything lands on disk. Free taster. Full 10-signal scanner in the ClawHub Security Pack.
As a process C 60/100 · Has gaps — weak spots: when it triggers, failures and branches, running it twice
What is at stake
Medium-severity findings: the skill is probably honest, but read what alarmed the scanner.
Below is the worst case for this category. The finding here is medium: the guard saw a sign, not a proof.
The skill contains commands that delete files, rewrite disks or execute code fetched from the network. The agent may run them without asking if it believes the instructions require it.
Replace destructive commands with safe equivalents that ask for confirmation, scope them to one folder, and stop piping curl into a shell: pin a version and a checksum.
How to improve
- Say in the description WHEN to use the skill ("use when…", example requests): that is the agent's main cue.
- Your own cases (evals/evals.json, 4–6 real requests with expected answers): the full check would then run those instead of a model-drafted suite.
- A spec.yaml with trigger phrases and assertions — a behaviour contract for CI; `skilltest init` writes a template.
Guard findings · 8
✓ No critical or high findings
Medium and low: 8
✓ Guard found no suspicious behaviour. 8 matches are attack strings quoted in this security skill's own documentation.
Files scanned: 5. Evidence is masked. Grey chips explain why severity was lowered.
Against the Agent Skills spec
- warning
description-no-whendescription does not say WHEN to use the skill (no "use when") - note
frontmatter-keyunknown frontmatter key "requires"
Process rating: all ten parameters 60/100
- 0Failures and branches. Linear process with no failure handling
- 0Progress reporting. Says nothing while it works
- 20When it triggers. No condition that starts the skill
- 30Running it twice. 4 mutating operations with no state check
- 60Tools and files. Uses tools (bash, web) that frontmatter does not declare
- 60Result and completion. Output format stated, no completion criterion
- 70Inputs and preconditions. Inputs and preconditions are listed
- 100Steps. 13 steps
- 100Consistency. Name and required fields are in place
- 100Execution cost. Instruction body is 515 tokens
Everything here is measured from the skill text rather than judged by a model, so the numbers are checkable. A parameter weighs more when it is a more common reason for the process to stall.
Quality signals
- +5Description has no quoted example phrases that should trigger the skill
- +4Description does not say when NOT to use the skill (false activations)
- +1No license
- +2Single-language instructions
- +3Description length 179: enough signal without eating the budget
- +4Structure: 6 headings
- +3Step-by-step instructions: 13 items
- +3Output format is stated explicitly
- +4Has examples (1 code blocks)
Quality base 70; lint remarks subtract, signals add up to 100. Result: 74.