macos-app-distribution-dmg

macos-app-distribution-dmg is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aka-kika/akakika-skills. It costs 58 tokens per session (2,188 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Guidance for packaging a macOS app as a DMG, a disk image users open to drag an app into Applications, for distribution outside Apple's App Store. It covers Developer ID signing, notarization, stapling, and launch verification.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to sign, notarize, staple, assemble, and verify a distributable macOS DMG on a Mac that has not seen the developer certificates.
Why use it?
It prevents Gatekeeper from warning that the app is damaged or from blocking it because the developer cannot be verified.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to sign, notarize, staple, assemble, and verify a distributable macOS DMG on a Mac that has not seen the developer certificates.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg
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.

Any agent
npx skills add aka-kika/akakika-skills --skill macos-app-distribution-dmg
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aka-kika/akakika-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for macos-app-distribution-dmg

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for macos-app-distribution-dmg

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aka-kika/akakika-skills/macos-app-distribution-dmg.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,188 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 9 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Privilege Escalation · line 138
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 144
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 61
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 61
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 65
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 69
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 71
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 77
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 69
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00058 $0.02188
Opus 5 $0.00029 $0.01094
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00438
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00219

Measured 12d ago against content hash 532b80dc0f7b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

macos-app-distribution-dmg 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 12d 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.

skills/swift-macos/macos-app-distribution-dmg/SKILL.md · 209 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 209 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

macOS App Distribution (DMG)

Ship a macOS app outside the App Store so it opens first-try on a stranger's Mac: Developer ID signature, hardened runtime, notarization, staple, DMG. Miss a step and the user gets "App is damaged and can't be opened" — which most users read as your app is broken.

When to use

Use this skill when the user says:

  • distribute outside the App Store
  • DMG / disk image / drag to Applications
  • codesign / Developer ID
  • notarize / notarization / notarytool
  • staple / Gatekeeper
  • "app is damaged and can't be opened"
  • "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified"
  • hardened runtime

Do not use this skill for Mac App Store submission (different signing + review pipeline), iOS distribution, or pkg-installer authoring beyond the note below.

Core rule

Sign inside-out with Developer ID + hardened runtime,
notarize the final artifact, staple both the app and the DMG,
and verify on a machine that has never seen your certificates.

Prerequisites

  • Apple Developer Program membership.
  • Developer ID Application certificate in the login keychain (Xcode > Settings > Accounts > Manage Certificates, or developer.apple.com). This is a different certificate from "Apple Development" and "Apple Distribution".
  • Once, store notarization credentials (App Store Connect API key, or Apple ID + app-specific password):
xcrun notarytool store-credentials "notary-profile" \
  --key ~/keys/AuthKey_ABC123.p8 --key-id ABC123 --issuer <issuer-uuid>

The pipeline

archive → export (Developer ID signed, hardened runtime)
        → build DMG → sign DMG
        → notarize DMG → staple DMG (and the app inside)
        → verify → publish

1. Archive and export

xcodebuild -project MyApp.xcodeproj -scheme MyApp -configuration Release \
  archive -archivePath build/MyApp.xcarchive

xcodebuild -exportArchive \
  -archivePath build/MyApp.xcarchive \
  -exportOptionsPlist ExportOptions.plist \
  -exportPath build/export

Read the full file on GitHub · 209 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. 12d ago First seen · 209 lines · 58 tokens per session scan A 532b80dc0f7b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

macos-app-distribution-dmg is a skill published in the GitHub repository aka-kika/akakika-skills (10 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 2,188 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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