using-oscal-cli

Command-line guidance for oscal-cli, a tool for checking and transforming OSCAL documents. OSCAL is a standardized format for describing security controls, assessments, and related information.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to validate OSCAL documents, convert their formats, resolve imported profiles into catalogs, and list allowed values.
Why use it?
It helps developers verify that OSCAL files are valid and move them between XML, JSON, and YAML without guessing the command options.

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/metaschema-framework/claude-plugins/using-oscal-cli
Any agent
npx skills add metaschema-framework/claude-plugins --skill using-oscal-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/metaschema-framework/claude-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 18 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,152 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 $0.00018 $0.01152
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.00576
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00230
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00115

Measured 2d ago against content hash 0606e128b749, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

using-oscal-cli 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.

plugins/oscal-tools/skills/using-oscal-cli/SKILL.md · 184 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 184 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Using oscal-cli

The oscal-cli provides tools for validating, converting, and processing OSCAL documents.

Commands Overview

Command Description
validate Check that an OSCAL instance is well-formed and valid
convert Convert OSCAL between formats (XML, JSON, YAML)
resolve-profile Resolve profile imports to produce a catalog
list-allowed-values List allowed value constraints for OSCAL models

Validate

Check that an OSCAL document is well-formed and valid:

oscal-cli validate <file-or-URI>

Options

Option Description
--as <FORMAT> Source format: XML, JSON, or YAML
-c <URL> Additional constraint definitions
-o <FILE> Write SARIF results to file
--sarif-include-pass Include pass results in SARIF output
--disable-schema-validation Skip schema validation
--disable-constraint-validation Skip constraint validation
--path-format <FORMAT> Path format: auto, metapath, xpath, jsonpointer
--threads <count> Parallel constraint validation threads (experimental)

Examples

# Validate any OSCAL document (auto-detects model type)
oscal-cli validate ssp.json

# Validate with explicit format
oscal-cli validate document.xml --as xml

# Output SARIF results
oscal-cli validate catalog.json -o results.sarif

# Add custom constraints
oscal-cli validate ssp.json -c custom-constraints.xml

Convert

Convert OSCAL documents between formats:

oscal-cli convert --to=<FORMAT> <source-file> [destination-file]

Options

Option Description
--to <FORMAT> Target format: XML, JSON, or YAML (required)
--overwrite Overwrite destination if it exists

Examples

# Convert JSON to YAML
oscal-cli convert --to=yaml catalog.json catalog.yaml

# Convert XML to JSON
oscal-cli convert --to=json ssp.xml ssp.json

# Convert to YAML (output to stdout if no destination)
oscal-cli convert --to=yaml profile.json

Read the full file on GitHub · 184 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 · 184 lines · 18 tokens per session scan A 0606e128b749

Subscribe to this mod's changes

using-oscal-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository metaschema-framework/claude-plugins (10 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed CC0-1.0. It adds 18 tokens to every session and 1,152 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 2026-08-31.

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