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.
npx skills add xalgorix/xalgorix --skill analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifactsgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xalgorix/xalgorixWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/xalgorix/xalgorix/analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xalgorix/xalgorix/analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xalgorix/xalgorix/analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xalgorix/xalgorix/analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xalgorix/xalgorix/analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00050 | $0.02636 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00025 | $0.01318 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00010 | $0.00527 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00264 |
Grade A, and why
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts 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 8d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 227 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Analyzing Windows Shellbag Artifacts
Overview
Shellbags are Windows registry artifacts that track how users interact with folders through Windows Explorer, storing view settings such as icon size, window position, sort order, and view mode. From a forensic perspective, Shellbags provide definitive evidence of folder access -- even folders that no longer exist on the system. When a user browses to a folder via Windows Explorer, the Open/Save dialog, or the Control Panel, a Shellbag entry is created or updated in the user's registry hive. These entries persist after folder deletion, drive disconnection, and even across user profile resets, making them invaluable for proving that a user navigated to specific directories on local drives, USB devices, network shares, or zip archives.
When to Use
- When investigating security incidents that require analyzing windows shellbag artifacts
- When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
- When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
- When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques
Detection Gaps & Validation
- Shellbags prove Explorer-shell navigation only. Folders reached via
cmd, PowerShell, or programmatic APIs leave no Shellbag entry. Absence of a Shellbag is not absence of access — corroborate before clearing a path. - Most-missed source:
UsrClass.dat. On Windows 10/11 the bulk of folder activity lives inUsrClass.dat(Local Settings\...\Shell\BagMRU), notNTUSER.DAT. Parsing only NTUSER drops the majority of evidence; run SBECmd against both hives. - Timestamp/timezone pitfall: the embedded shell-item dates are local-time DOS dates with 2-second granularity, while
CreatedOn/ModifiedOn/AccessedOnreflect view-setting changes, not necessarily a visit. Do not treat them as UTC and do not equate them with first/last access without correlation. - Batch updates: Explorer can rewrite many Shellbag entries at shutdown, collapsing distinct visits into one timestamp.
- Anti-forensics: deletion of
BagMRUsubtrees or whole-hive replacement. Recover from VSS and replay.LOGtransaction files for dirty hives. - Validate / cross-corroborate: tie removable/network paths to USBSTOR + MountPoints2 (volume serials), LNK/Jump List targets, RecentDocs, and
$MFT/USN entries for the same folder. A folder that "no longer exists" should still reconcile with at least one second artifact before it anchors a finding.
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 227 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A 02c58e6f792d
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts is a skill published in the GitHub repository xalgorix/xalgorix (975 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 2,636 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-09-03.
Other skills, from other repositories
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts
Analyze Windows Shellbag registry artifacts to reconstruct folder browsing activity, detect access to removable media and network shares, and establish user interaction with directories even after deletion using SBECmd and ShellBags Explorer.
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts
Analyze Windows Shellbag registry artifacts to reconstruct folder browsing activity, detect access to removable media and network shares, and establish user interaction with directories even after deletion using SBECmd and ShellBags Explorer.
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts
Analyze Windows Shellbag registry artifacts to reconstruct folder browsing activity, detect access to removable media and network shares, and establish user interaction with directories even after deletion using SBECmd and ShellBags Explorer.
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts
Analyze Windows Shellbag (BagMRU) registry artifacts with SBECmd and Shellbags Explorer to reconstruct folder browsing activity and prove user interaction with directories, including removable media and network shares, even after the folders are deleted. Use when reconstructing a user's folder access history or…
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts
Analyze Windows Shellbag registry artifacts to reconstruct folder browsing activity, detect access to removable media and network shares, and establish user interaction with directories even after deletion using SBECmd and ShellBags Explorer.
analyzing-windows-shellbag-artifacts
Analyze Windows Shellbag registry artifacts to reconstruct folder browsing activity, detect access to removable media and network shares, and establish user interaction with directories even after deletion using SBECmd and ShellBags Explorer.