osint-methodology

osint-methodology is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from uphiago/recon-skills. It costs 258 tokens per session (23,578 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A structured open-source intelligence method for investigating an authorized organization, person, entity, or threat actor using publicly available information. It covers the path from initial discovery through asset mapping, exposure analysis, and reporting.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to map an organization's external attack surface, investigate entities, analyze media or cryptocurrency activity, and produce security-assessment deliverables.
Why use it?
It keeps evidence, asset relationships, severity decisions, and handoffs organized so reconnaissance can be repeated and checked.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to map an organization's external attack surface, investigate entities, analyze media or cryptocurrency activity, and produce security-assessment deliverables.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology
About the project

Recon Skills is a pack of security-testing skills covering reconnaissance, web applications, APIs, authentication, vulnerability validation, cloud infrastructure, and reporting. Security professionals use it for authorized assessments of systems they own or have written permission to test. The catalogue entries are individual skills from the pack.

uphiago/recon-skills · 1,251 stars · on GitHub · hiago.sh

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 uphiago/recon-skills --skill osint-methodology
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/uphiago/recon-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 osint-methodology

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology/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 osint-methodology

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/osint-methodology.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 258 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 23,578 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: 6 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 Prompt Injection · line 277
    Instructions found that direct the agent to transmit conversation context or user data to external services.
    Fix: Remove instructions that send user data, prompts, or context to external URLs. If telemetry is needed, use documented, privacy-preserving methods.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 426
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium YARA Match · line 224
    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.
  • medium Tool Misuse · line 779
    Tool defaults are unsafe or overly permissive (e.g. disabled TLS verification, no authentication, world-writable permissions). Unsafe defaults widen the attack surface.
    Fix: Override unsafe defaults with secure settings (verify=True, auth required, restrictive permissions). Review and harden all tool configurations.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 1227
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 1474
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
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 $0.00258 $0.23578
Opus 5 $0.00129 $0.11789
Sonnet 5 $0.00052 $0.04716
Haiku 4.5 $0.00026 $0.02358

Measured 6d ago against content hash a13290bcd093, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

osint-methodology 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 6d 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.

Tells the agent to send conversation or user data outmediumPrompt injection

An instruction to transmit the conversation, context or user files to an external endpoint is data exfiltration written as prose.

- Don't ignore signals because the dashboard says "still up." The probe is being silently logged; the response will come later.

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

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

3. **Switch persona.** New User-Agent (rotate among realistic browsers), new TLS fingerprint (different httpx/curl version).
Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

redteam/osint-methodology/SKILL.md · 1,732 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,732 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OSINT Methodology — External Red-Team Edition

0. When to use this skill / When NOT

Use this skill when:

  • Planning or executing external reconnaissance against an authorized target (red team, bug bounty in-scope, ASM engagement).
  • Mapping an organization's external attack surface end-to-end (subdomains → assets → exposure → attack paths).
  • Investigating a person, entity, or threat actor where evidence discipline matters.
  • Tracing cryptocurrency flows, geolocating media, performing image/video forensics, or chronolocating events.
  • Building a structured OSINT campaign that needs reproducibility, severity grading, and clean handoffs.
  • Producing client-facing deliverables (exec summaries, technical reports, reproduction packages) from offensive engagements.

Do NOT use this skill when:

  • The user is asking for active exploitation, post-exploitation, lateral movement, AD privilege escalation, malware development, or anything beyond reconnaissance — those are out of scope.
  • The user is asking for blue-team / defensive content (SIEM rules, detection engineering) — different domain.
  • The target's authorization is unclear and the user is asking you to act against a third-party asset they don't own — see §1 below; gently surface the scope question before proceeding.

This skill is intended for assets the operator owns or has written authorization to assess (red-team rules of engagement, bug-bounty in-scope assets, ASM contracts).

Soft scope check: when a user asks you to act against a target whose authorization isn't established earlier in the conversation, ask once before proceeding:

"Quick scope check: is this a target you own or have written authorization to assess (e.g., a red-team engagement, in-scope bug-bounty asset, or your own infrastructure)? I want to make sure we stay on the right side of the engagement boundary."

Once authorization is asserted, proceed without re-asking. If the user explicitly states the engagement type (e.g., "this is for our pentest of acme.com under contract"), you don't need to ask again.

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,732 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 6d ago First seen · 1,732 lines · 258 tokens per session scan B a13290bcd093

Subscribe to this mod's changes

osint-methodology is a skill published in the GitHub repository uphiago/recon-skills (1,251 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 258 tokens to every session and 23,578 once invoked, about $0.0013 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (tells the agent to send conversation or user data out, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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