plugin-only-agent-surface-gating

plugin-only-agent-surface-gating is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ychampion/cskill-agents. It costs 34 tokens per session (362 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A security gate that controls whether an agent may connect to extra MCP servers, which are services that give an agent additional tools.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps secure agent runtimes that allow trusted plugins but reject undeclared integrations.
Why use it?
It blocks untrusted agent definitions from bypassing a session's plugin-only restrictions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit It helps secure agent runtimes that allow trusted plugins but reject undeclared integrations.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating
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 ychampion/cskill-agents --skill plugin-only-agent-surface-gating
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ychampion/cskill-agents

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 plugin-only-agent-surface-gating

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating/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 plugin-only-agent-surface-gating

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ychampion/cskill-agents/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 34 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 362 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 $0.00034 $0.00362
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00181
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00072
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00036

Measured 7d ago against content hash 537b8a599c4b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

plugin-only-agent-surface-gating 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 7d 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.

agents/claude-code/skills/plugin-only-agent-surface-gating/SKILL.md · 29 lines

What it actually says

SKILL: Plugin-Only Agent Surface Gating

Domain: permission-gating Trigger: Apply this when an agent tries to extend its MCP surface while the session enforces plugin-only MCP access. Source Pattern: Distilled from reviewed agent trust-boundary and plugin-only surface-gating implementations.

Core Method

Before connecting any agent-specific MCP servers, check whether the session is locked to plugin-only extension mode. If it is, allow the extra MCP connections only for trusted agent definitions such as built-ins or approved plugins. Untrusted or user-controlled agent definitions should continue without creating new clients, while logging the gating decision clearly. This prevents policy bypasses without breaking trusted packaged agents.

Key Rules

  • Check the plugin-only policy before any MCP initialization begins.
  • Treat approved built-in or packaged agents as trusted, so their declared MCP integrations remain honored.
  • Log a warning when skipping servers so telemetry captures the change in behavior.
  • Always return the parent clients and an empty cleanup callback when gating is active to avoid downstream failures.

Example Application

When running in a highly regulated environment, reuse this heuristic before initializing agent MCP servers so only pre-approved agents can expand the MCP surface and user scripts cannot sneak new servers in.

Anti-Patterns (What NOT to do)

  • Don’t let user-specified agents create external MCP connections while plugin-only mode is enabled; that defeats the security setting.
  • Don’t apply the gate uniformly without checking admin trust; built-in agents still need their MCP servers even when plugin-only is true.
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. 7d ago First seen · 29 lines · 34 tokens per session scan A 537b8a599c4b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

plugin-only-agent-surface-gating is a skill published in the GitHub repository ychampion/cskill-agents (36 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 362 once invoked, about $0.0002 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.