hooks-and-guardrails

hooks-and-guardrails is a skill for Claude Code from krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso. It costs 58 tokens per session (1,734 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of hooks and guardrails for controlling an AI coding agent's access and actions. It combines deny rules, sandbox and permission choices, and automatic checks that can block unsafe behavior or require passing tests.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for blocking reads of secret files, configuring agent permissions, adding safety hooks, and gating completion on test results.
Why use it?
Written instructions may be forgotten, while enforced checks can stop risky actions consistently. It helps limit secret access and prevents work from being marked complete without verification.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Part of the playbooks-virtuoso plugin — 12 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for blocking reads of secret files, configuring agent permissions, adding safety hooks, and gating completion on test results.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails
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 krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso --skill hooks-and-guardrails
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install playbooks-virtuoso, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 12 skills.

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 hooks-and-guardrails

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails/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 hooks-and-guardrails

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso/hooks-and-guardrails.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 1,734 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.
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 $0.01734
Opus 5.5 $0.00023 $0.00694
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00012 $0.00347
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00173

Measured yesterday against content hash 6961d7f08d35, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hooks-and-guardrails 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 yesterday.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 6 executable files (scripts/block-secret-reads.sh, scripts/post-edit-check.sh, scripts/prompt-reminder.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.

skills/playbooks/hooks-and-guardrails/SKILL.md · 97 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 97 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Hooks and guardrails

An instruction in a rules file is a request. A hook is code that runs whether or not the model remembers the request. Use rules to say what you want, deny rules and the sandbox to set hard limits, and hooks to catch what slips through and to give the agent fast feedback on its own work.

Core principles

Principle Meaning
Enforce, do not ask Anything that must never happen belongs in a deny rule or the sandbox, not in prose
Layers fail differently Deny rules cover the agent's file tools, the sandbox covers shell processes, hooks cover custom logic. Use at least two for secrets
Hooks are sensors A hook that returns the error to the agent turns a silent failure into a fix in the same turn
Fast or off A hook that takes seconds on every edit gets disabled. Keep per-edit checks under a second or two
Hooks run with your permissions A hook script is code the agent can trigger. Review it like any other script, and never let it run untrusted input through a shell

Procedure

  1. Pick a risk level. Choose the row that matches the work, then set the permission mode and sandbox to match.

    Risk Typical work Mode and isolation
    Low Own repo, no secrets nearby, no untrusted content Accept-edits style mode plus deny rules
    Medium Real project, credentials on the machine, reads issues or docs from the web Default prompts or classifier mode, OS sandbox on, deny rules, hooks below
    High Unknown repo, unattended runs, CI, or untrusted input plus network access Container or VM with no secrets mounted, allowlisted network, pre-approved tools only, no bypass flags on the host

    Bypass-everything flags belong only inside an isolated container or VM. See deny-rules-and-modes for the settings per tool.

  2. Add deny rules for secret files and risky commands. Deny rules win over allow rules and over a hook's allow. They do not stop a script that opens the file by itself, which is why step 3 and the sandbox exist.

Read the full file on GitHub · 97 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. yesterday Changed · +4 lines 6961d7f08d35
  2. 2d ago First seen · 93 lines · 58 tokens per session scan A 1caed9825792

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hooks-and-guardrails is a skill published in the GitHub repository krzysztofsurdy/code-virtuoso (36 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 1,734 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-10-22.

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