What is bash-script-validator?

A skill for checking Bash, POSIX shell, and other .sh scripts. It checks syntax, runs ShellCheck when available, and performs security, portability, and optimization checks.

Use it to validate, lint, audit, fix, or review shell scripts, including checking whether a script follows POSIX shell rules.

It finds script errors and portability or security problems before they cause failures in development or CI.

bash-script-validator — Skill by akin-ozer

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 skills/akin-ozer/cc-devops-skills/bash-script-validator

Any agent

npx skills add akin-ozer/cc-devops-skills --skill bash-script-validator

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/akin-ozer/cc-devops-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install devops-skills-plugin, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 31 skills.

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,756 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00022	$0.01756
Opus 5	$0.00011	$0.00878
Sonnet 5	$0.00004	$0.00351
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00176

Measured 3d ago against content hash 13059ee80d91, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bash-script-validator 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 3d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 8 executable files (examples/bad-bash.sh, examples/bad-shell.sh, examples/good-bash.sh, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

devops-skills-plugin/skills/bash-script-validator/SKILL.md · 247 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 247 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Bash Script Validator

Overview

This skill validates Bash and POSIX shell scripts with layered checks:

Syntax validation (bash -n or sh -n)
ShellCheck static analysis (system binary or wrapper fallback)
Custom security, portability, and optimization checks

Use the default flow below, then branch to fallbacks only when the environment is constrained.

Trigger Guidance

Use this skill when the request includes script quality, linting, syntax checking, or shell portability work.

Trigger Phrases

"Validate this bash script"
"Lint this .sh file"
"Find security issues in this shell script"
"Why does this script fail ShellCheck?"
"Make this script POSIX compliant"
"Review this shell script before CI"

Non-Trigger Examples

General Linux command questions with no script file
Kubernetes, Terraform, or pipeline validation tasks that do not involve shell scripts
Pure prose editing tasks

Deterministic Execution Model

Run commands from this skill directory:

cd devops-skills-plugin/skills/bash-script-validator

Step 1: Preflight

Confirm target path exists and is readable.
Confirm bash is available.
Determine whether fixes can be applied directly (write access) or only suggested (read-only).

Step 2: Run Baseline Validation (Default Path)

bash scripts/validate.sh <script-path>

For deterministic stage behavior, set the ShellCheck provider explicitly:

# Modes: auto (default), system, wrapper, disabled
VALIDATOR_SHELLCHECK_MODE=system bash scripts/validate.sh <script-path>

Record:

Detected shell type
Exit code (0 clean, 1 warnings, 2 errors)
All reported issue lines and ShellCheck codes (SC####) when present

Step 3: Load Only Needed References

Progressive disclosure by issue type:

ShellCheck code explanations: docs/shellcheck-reference.md
General fix patterns and security mistakes: docs/common-mistakes.md
Bash-only behavior: docs/bash-reference.md
POSIX portability or bashism fixes: docs/shell-reference.md
Text-processing optimization issues: docs/grep-reference.md, docs/awk-reference.md, docs/sed-reference.md, docs/regex-reference.md (only when directly relevant)

Read the full file on GitHub · 247 lines

Files

What ships with it

16 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

3d ago First seen · 247 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 13059ee80d91

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bash-script-validator is a skill published in the GitHub repository akin-ozer/cc-devops-skills (303 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 1,756 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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