wow-api-lua-environment

A reference for the Lua 5.1 environment used by World of Warcraft addons, including its security rules, timers, hooks, user-interface scripts, and debugging tools.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing or debugging addons, adding timers and hooks, working with secure interface elements, investigating errors, or checking whether actions are restricted.
Why use it?
It explains restrictions such as taint and combat lockdown, which determine what addon code is allowed to do and why some actions fail.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/jburlison/wowaddonapiagents/wow-api-lua-environment
Any agent
npx skills add JBurlison/WoWAddonAPIAgents --skill wow-api-lua-environment
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JBurlison/WoWAddonAPIAgents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 121 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,014 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00121 $0.04014
Opus 5 $0.00060 $0.02007
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00803
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00401

Measured 2d ago against content hash fb76ab1c98fb, 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-lua-environment 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/skills/wow-api-lua-environment/SKILL.md · 475 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 475 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Lua Environment & Security (Retail — Patch 12.0.0)

Comprehensive reference for the WoW Lua sandbox, security model, taint system, secure execution, timers, hooks, logging, and restricted actions.

Source: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_API Secure Execution: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Secure_Execution_and_Tainting Lua Functions: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Lua_functions Current as of: Patch 12.0.0 (Build 65655) — January 28, 2026 Scope: Retail only.

Scope

This skill covers:

  • Lua Sandbox — WoW's Lua 5.1 environment, restricted standard library, blocked functions
  • Taint System — How addon code becomes tainted and what tainted code cannot do
  • Secure Execution — Protected functions, secure frames, secure handlers
  • Combat Lockdown — What addons can and cannot do during combat
  • C_Timer — Timer functions (After, NewTicker, NewTimer)
  • Hooks — hooksecurefunc, securecallfunction, securecallmethod
  • C_RestrictedActions — Addon restriction state queries
  • C_Log — Logging utilities
  • FrameScript — Frame script environment, secret values, scrubbing
  • Debugging — Error handling, stack traces, debugging utilities

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when you need to:

  • Understand what Lua functions are available vs blocked in WoW
  • Work with or debug taint issues
  • Write code that interacts with secure/protected frames
  • Use timers, delayed execution, or ticker patterns
  • Hook existing functions safely
  • Understand combat lockdown restrictions
  • Handle addon restriction states (12.0.0 instance restrictions)
  • Log messages for debugging
  • Work with secret values and the FrameScript sandbox

WoW Lua 5.1 Sandbox

WoW runs Lua 5.1.4 with significant modifications. The following standard library functions are blocked or removed:

Blocked Standard Functions

Blocked Reason
loadfile() No filesystem access
dofile() No filesystem access
io.* No filesystem access
os.execute() No shell access
os.exit() Cannot close client
os.remove() No filesystem
os.rename() No filesystem
os.tmpname() No filesystem
os.getenv() No environment access
package.* No package system
require() No module loading
module() No module system
newproxy() Removed
getfenv() Limited — returns read-only
setfenv() Very restricted
collectgarbage() Limited modes

Read the full file on GitHub · 475 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 · 475 lines · 121 tokens per session scan A fb76ab1c98fb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

wow-api-lua-environment is a skill published in the GitHub repository JBurlison/WoWAddonAPIAgents (43 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 121 tokens to every session and 4,014 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

agent-host-chat-contributions

Build and review cross-cutting agent-host chat behavior through lifecycle contributions. Use when adding turn lifecycle side effects, prompt or context injection, restored-history transformation, protocol-action observation, or when reviewing changes that add code to AgentSideEffects or AgentService.

microsoft/vscode · 56 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens