paw-design

paw-design is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills. It costs 155 tokens per session (1,808 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A design guide for Privileged Access Workstations, which are hardened devices reserved for sensitive administrator tasks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose the right workstation tier, harden the device, and control access to systems such as Microsoft Entra, Azure, and domain controllers.
Why use it?
It helps isolate high-value administrator accounts from browsing, email, and other activities that could expose credentials.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it to choose the right workstation tier, harden the device, and control access to systems such as Microsoft Entra, Azure, and domain controllers.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design
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 vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills --skill paw-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-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 paw-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design/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 paw-design

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills/paw-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 155 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,808 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 $0.00155 $0.01808
Opus 5 $0.00077 $0.00904
Sonnet 5 $0.00031 $0.00362
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00181

Measured 12d ago against content hash 2375294cc67a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

paw-design 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 12d 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.

skills/paw-design/SKILL.md · 119 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) Design

A Privileged Access Workstation (PAW) is a hardened, dedicated device used only for privileged tasks - isolating sensitive accounts from browsing, email, and arbitrary apps. PAWs are the device pillar of Microsoft's privileged access strategy and the enforcement point for the clean source principle.

When to use

Protecting administrators of high-value systems (Entra control plane, Azure root, domain controllers, identity infrastructure - "Tier 0") from credential theft, browser exploit, and supply-chain attack. Use this skill to choose the device tier, harden the build, and enforce PAW-only access via CA.

Do not use this skill for general endpoint hardening (defender-for-endpoint) or device compliance baseline (intune-device-mgmt).

Pick the device profile by admin tier

The enterprise access model maps admin roles to three device profiles. Wrong tier = either over-spending or under-protecting.

Tier Roles in scope Device profile What's allowed
Privileged (PAW) Global Admin, Privileged Auth Admin, Tier 0 Azure Owner, Domain Admin, DC operators Dedicated hardened device Admin portals only; no email, no browsing
Specialized Workload admins (Exchange, SharePoint, Intune, SQL DBA), Tier 1 Azure Contributor Hardened build; some productivity Admin portals + curated productivity (Office)
Enterprise Help desk, Tier 2 ops, Reports Reader, Security Reader Standard managed device + strong baseline Full productivity with MDE + ASR + tamper protection

Rule of thumb: the test for "needs a PAW" is can this account log into a domain controller, modify Conditional Access, or assume the root Azure subscription? If yes, PAW. If only managing one workload, Specialized. The PAW population should be small (typically < 1% of admins).

Approach

  1. Adopt the enterprise access model — Map every privileged role to control / management / data plane. Tier 0 = control plane (identity, cloud control plane, on-prem AD). Tier 1 = workload admins. Tier 2 = ops / read-only. Devices, accounts, and access paths must match the tier. Verify: tier mapping document signed off; Tier 0 role count documented.

Read the full file on GitHub · 119 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. 12d ago First seen · 119 lines · 155 tokens per session scan A 2375294cc67a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

paw-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository vinayaklatthe/microsoft-security-skills (173 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 155 tokens to every session and 1,808 once invoked, about $0.0008 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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