security-checklist

security-checklist is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jamditis/claude-skills-journalism. It costs 28 tokens per session (8,018 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A pre-release checklist for reviewing application security using the OWASP Top 10, a widely used list of common web security risks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to audit code before shipping or production release, including API-related concerns. It is not a replacement for penetration testing or a threat model.
Why use it?
It helps find obvious security problems before deployment and points to deeper standards when a checklist is not enough.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also agents/openai.yaml present. Also seen: mentions subagents; positional $N argument.

Part of the security-toolkit plugin — 5 skills, 1 command shipped together

Good fit Use it to audit code before shipping or production release, including API-related concerns. It is not a replacement for penetration testing or a threat model.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist
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 jamditis/claude-skills-journalism --skill security-checklist
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install security-toolkit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills, 1 command.

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 security-checklist

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist/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 security-checklist

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamditis/claude-skills-journalism/security-checklist.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 28 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 8,018 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 2 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: 10 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 Server-Side Request Forgery · line 65
    Code accesses a cloud instance metadata endpoint (e.g. 169.254.169.254). A single request can return temporary IAM credentials, making this a high-value SSRF target for credential theft.
    Fix: Remove access to cloud metadata endpoints unless strictly required. If metadata is needed, restrict it (e.g. IMDSv2 with hop limit) and never expose returned credentials.
  • high Privilege Escalation · line 111
    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 121
    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 122
    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 126
    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 YARA Match · line 159
    YARA rule matched a hack tool or exploit indicator (offensive tools, reconnaissance, privilege escalation, or exploit frameworks).
    Fix: Remove offensive tool references and exploit code. Legitimate agent skills should not contain penetration testing tools, exploit frameworks, or reconnaissance utilities.
  • high Tool Misuse · line 265
    Tool parameters are crafted to achieve unintended or unsafe behavior. Parameter abuse can bypass intended safety checks (e.g. shell=True, --force, dangerous glob patterns).
    Fix: Validate all tool parameters against an allowlist. Reject dangerous parameter values (shell=True, --force, -rf /) and use safe defaults.
  • high Output Handling · line 283
    Model output is used without validation or sanitization. Unvalidated output injected into downstream contexts (SQL, shell, HTML) enables injection attacks and arbitrary code execution.
    Fix: Validate and sanitize all model output before using it in downstream contexts. Use parameterized queries for SQL, shell quoting for commands, and HTML encoding for web output.
  • high Output Handling · line 290
    Model output is used without validation or sanitization. Unvalidated output injected into downstream contexts (SQL, shell, HTML) enables injection attacks and arbitrary code execution.
    Fix: Validate and sanitize all model output before using it in downstream contexts. Use parameterized queries for SQL, shell quoting for commands, and HTML encoding for web output.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 63
    Skill enables autonomous high-impact decisions without human-in-the-loop verification. Critical operations (destructive commands, financial transactions, data deletion) should require explicit user confirmation.
    Fix: Add human-in-the-loop confirmation for destructive, irreversible, or high-impact operations. Never auto-execute commands that modify files, send data, or alter system state.
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 $0.00028 $0.08018
Opus 5.5 $0.00011 $0.03207
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00006 $0.01604
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00802

Measured 2d ago against content hash ec73641f5709, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

security-checklist scanned grade B with 2 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.

Cloud metadata endpointmediumServer-side request forgery

One request to 169.254.169.254 can return temporary IAM credentials.

- [ ] SSRF defenses: outbound allowlist for any URL fetched server-side; no `localhost`, `127.0.0.0/8`, link-local (`169.254.0.0/16`), or cloud metadata IP (`169.254.169.254`) fetches; DNS rebinding protection on resolve

Downgraded: this mod is about security review, or the phrase is quoted, so it is likely naming the pattern rather than instructing it.

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

The Node child_process module exposes a shell-execution primitive (the one that runs a command string through `/bin/sh`) and an argv-list primitive (the spawn family with `shell: false`). For any input that touches user
security-toolkit/skills/security-checklist/SKILL.md · 541 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 541 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Security checklist

Pre-deployment security audit organized around the OWASP Top 10:2025 categories (released late 2025, succeeding the 2021 edition). This is the baseline that prevents obvious disasters, not a substitute for a real penetration test or threat model. For verification depth beyond this checklist, see OWASP ASVS 5.0 (https://owasp.org/www-project-application-security-verification-standard/). For API-specific scope, see OWASP API Security Top 10:2023 (https://owasp.org/API-Security/editions/2023/en/0x00-header/).

Step 0: Research the current security landscape (do this first)

Security knowledge ages on a 6-12 month half-life. The recipes below were last verified on 2026-05-08; they may be stale by the time you read this. Before applying any pattern in this skill, fan out research scoped to the OWASP Top 10:2025 categories being audited so the recipes are interpreted against current authoritative sources, not against this file's snapshot.

Default-on, with a documented skip

Run the 4-angle research below by default. Skip ONLY when ALL of these hold:

  • (a) You ran this same skill on this same primitive within the last 4 hours of the current session,
  • (b) That prior research surfaced no urgent advisories for the OWASP Top 10:2025 categories being audited,
  • (c) You log a one-line Research skipped because <reason> note in your response.

"I think I know" / "moving fast" / "user wants this done quickly" / "already familiar" are NOT valid skip reasons. The whole point of this preamble is that future-you should not trust this skill body's defaults until current state is checked.

Fan out 4 subagents in parallel

Each subagent returns ≤300 words of bullets with citations. Dispatch all 4 in a single message so they run concurrently.

Angle 1, Authoritative standards. Have NIST / OWASP / IETF (RFCs and Internet-Drafts) / W3C / CISA published anything new about the OWASP Top 10:2025 categories being audited in the last 6-12 months? Look for: spec finalizations, deprecations, replacement specs, RFC publications, draft revisions, NIST SP updates, OWASP project version bumps. Cite by document number + publication date.

Read the full file on GitHub · 541 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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.

  1. 2d ago Changed · +5 lines ec73641f5709
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 536 lines · 28 tokens per session scan B 84e7f0bd66db

Subscribe to this mod's changes

security-checklist is a skill published in the GitHub repository jamditis/claude-skills-journalism (434 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 28 tokens to every session and 8,018 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (cloud metadata endpoint, runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-05.

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