token-smuggling

token-smuggling is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from thejefflarson/soundcheck. It costs 72 tokens per session (706 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A security check for Unicode injection in text sent to language models. It looks for hidden direction controls, invisible characters, and look-alike letters that can alter prompts or evade text filters.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when prompts include user input, retrieved content, tool output, or other external text, especially where blocklists or comparisons are involved.
Why use it?
Without normalising text, attacker-controlled input can make instructions appear different from what a person or filter sees.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the soundcheck plugin — 50 skills, 7 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

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/thejefflarson/soundcheck/token-smuggling
Any agent
npx skills add thejefflarson/soundcheck --skill token-smuggling
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/thejefflarson/soundcheck

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install soundcheck, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 50 skills, 7 agents, 2 hooks.

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 token-smuggling

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thejefflarson/soundcheck/token-smuggling.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/thejefflarson/soundcheck/token-smuggling)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/thejefflarson/soundcheck/token-smuggling"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/thejefflarson/soundcheck/token-smuggling.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 706 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 $0.00072 $0.00706
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00353
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00141
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00071

Measured 4d ago against content hash 24c2b097c0c3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

token-smuggling 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 4d 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.

.claude/skills/token-smuggling/SKILL.md · 49 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 49 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Token Smuggling / Unicode Injection (LLM01:2025)

What this checks

Detects user input passed to LLMs without Unicode normalization. Attackers embed RTL override characters, zero-width joiners, or homoglyphs to manipulate prompt structure, bypass keyword filters, or make malicious instructions appear legitimate.

Vulnerable patterns

  • User input interpolated into a prompt with no normalization step at the trust boundary
  • Blocklists or keyword filters that compare against pre-normalized text, letting homoglyph variants pass
  • Retrieved RAG content or tool outputs concatenated into a prompt on a path the sanitizer does not cover
  • Comparisons on raw bytes where bidirectional overrides or zero-width characters can split or hide tokens

Fix immediately

Flag the vulnerable code, explain the risk, and suggest a fix establishing these properties. Translate to the Unicode library or runtime APIs of the audited file — use that stack's documented NFKC normalization and character-class predicates; do not import a recipe from a different stack.

  1. User input is NFKC-normalized before it reaches any prompt or blocklist comparison. NFKC collapses compatibility forms and canonical equivalents, so homoglyphs, fullwidth digits, and ligatures fold to their ASCII counterparts. Normalization runs once, at the trust boundary — not scattered per call site.
  2. Unicode control and invisible formatting characters are stripped after normalization. Bidirectional overrides (U+202AU+202E), zero-width space/joiner (U+200BU+200D), word joiner (U+2060), and BOM (U+FEFF) do not survive into the prompt. These are the characters attackers use to hide instructions or split keywords.
  3. Security-sensitive comparisons (blocklists, keyword filters, domain allowlists) run on normalized input, not on the raw bytes. A filter that checks for a string but runs on pre-normalized text lets the homoglyph variant pass.
  4. The same helper runs on every ingress path — direct user input, retrieved RAG content, tool outputs. Attackers move the payload wherever the sanitizer does not run.

Read the full file on GitHub · 49 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. 4d ago First seen · 49 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A 24c2b097c0c3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

token-smuggling is a skill published in the GitHub repository thejefflarson/soundcheck (20 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 706 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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