WoW API 12.0.0 Critical Changes

A reference for breaking changes in the World of Warcraft 12.0.0 addon programming interface, including new security rules and removed or deprecated functions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when updating or debugging Lua addons for WoW 12.0.0 and later, especially code handling combat information, instance limits, or protected values.
Why use it?
It prevents developers from relying on older 11.x or earlier API behavior that no longer applies.

Instructions file for GitHub Copilot

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/jburlison/wowaddonapiagents/wow-api-important
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JBurlison/WoWAddonAPIAgents

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

Per session 4,669 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 4,669 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.04669 $0.04669
Opus 5 $0.02335 $0.02335
Sonnet 5 $0.00934 $0.00934
Haiku 4.5 $0.00467 $0.00467

Measured 2d ago against content hash c3c6b0fca2e4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

WoW API 12.0.0 Critical Changes scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.github/instructions/wow-api-important.instructions.md · 431 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 431 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Patch 12.0.0 (Midnight) — Critical API Changes

TOC version: 120000 These changes are ACTIVE in pre-patch (12.0.0) and Midnight launch (12.0.1). Prior API knowledge from 11.x and earlier does not apply for the systems listed below.


1. Secret Values — The New Security Model

Patch 12.0.0 introduces Secret Values, a fundamentally new Lua construct that replaces outright API removal for most combat-related information. Many APIs that previously returned plain numbers/strings now return secret values that tainted (addon) code cannot inspect.

What Are Secret Values?

  • Secret values are opaque containers holding a Lua value (number, string, boolean, etc.) that tainted code cannot read, compare, or do arithmetic on.
  • Untainted (secure) code can operate on them normally — the restrictions only apply to addon (tainted) execution paths.
  • Test with issecretvalue(value) → returns true if the value is secret.
  • Test with canaccessvalue(value) → returns true if the caller can operate on secrets.

What Tainted Code CAN Do With Secrets

  • Store them in variables, upvalues, or as values in tables.
  • Pass them to Lua functions.
  • Pass them to C API functions explicitly marked as accepting secrets from tainted callers.
  • Concatenate secret strings/numbers (also via string.format, string.join, string.concat).
  • Query their type with type(secret) — returns the real type (e.g. "number").

What Tainted Code CANNOT Do With Secrets

  • Compare or perform boolean tests (if secret then, secret == x): immediate Lua error.
  • Arithmetic (secret + 1, secret * 2): immediate Lua error.
  • Use the length operator (#secret): immediate Lua error.
  • Use secrets as table keys (t[secret] = x): immediate Lua error.
  • Indexed access on a secret value (secret["foo"]): immediate Lua error.
  • Call a secret value as a function: immediate Lua error.

Secret Tables

  • A table can be flagged so that all indexed access yields secret values.
  • A table can be flagged as inaccessible to tainted code entirely (error on index, assign, iterate, or #).
  • If untainted code stores a secret as a table key, the table is irrevocably marked with both flags above.
  • Use canaccesstable(table) to test if tainted code can access a table without erroring.

Read the full file on GitHub · 431 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 431 lines · 4,669 tokens per session scan A c3c6b0fca2e4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

WoW API 12.0.0 Critical Changes is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository JBurlison/WoWAddonAPIAgents (43 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 4,669 tokens to every session, about $0.0233 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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