effector-audit

Security scanner for Effector packages (static-only).

The Trust Crisis

On February 18, 2026, Snyk published the ToxicSkills Report. The findings were severe: 36% of ClawHub skills contained prompt injection or malicious payloads. The ClawHavoc campaign had planted 1,184+ malicious skills targeting developers. Trend Micro confirmed distribution of the Atomic macOS Stealer through community-published skills. Microsoft, Cisco, and 1Password all published independent analyses confirming the systemic nature of the threat.

The root cause wasn't a bug. It was an architectural absence: no code signing, no security review, no formal permission model for AI agent capabilities. Anyone could publish a skill to ClawHub. Everyone had to trust it blindly.

This is npm circa 2018 — before npm audit, before lockfiles, before Sigstore. Except the stakes are higher, because AI agent capabilities don't just run code. They control what an AI does in the world: reading your files, calling APIs, sending messages, modifying databases.

effector-audit closes this gap.

Install

npm install @effectorhq/audit

You can also use the CLI directly without installing globally:

npx @effectorhq/audit ./my-skill
npx @effectorhq/audit ./my-skill --format json

See the published package on npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@effectorhq/audit

What It Does

1. Static Analysis (implemented)

Scans Effector packages for known vulnerability patterns (no execution sandbox):

npx effector-audit ./my-skill/

  ✗ CRITICAL  prompt-injection    Line 23: System prompt override detected
  ✗ HIGH      data-exfiltration   Line 47: Unscoped network access to external domain
  ⚠ MEDIUM    permission-creep    Network/filesystem/subprocess usage without declared permissions

  2 critical, 1 warning — audit failed

Detection patterns include:

• Prompt injection and jailbreak attempts in SKILL.md content
• Data exfiltration vectors (unscoped network, filesystem access)
• Obfuscated instructions (base64, unicode tricks, invisible text)

2. Permission Drift Check (implemented)

Cross-references declared permissions against actual capability behavior:

npx effector-audit permissions ./my-skill/

  Declared permissions:
    ✓ network:external

  Detected behavior:
    ✗ network:evil.com       (fetch/curl — NOT DECLARED)
    ✗ write:filesystem       (fs.writeFileSync — NOT DECLARED)

  Permission drift detected: 2 undeclared capabilities

What Is Not Implemented Yet

The README previously described signing/supply-chain verification. Those are roadmap items and are not in the current codebase:

• Cryptographic signing / verification
• Supply-chain verification / SBOM generation
• GitHub Action effector-audit-action

Integration

CI/CD Pipeline

# In your publish pipeline
effector-audit . && effector-audit permissions . && npm publish

Registry Gate

effector-audit is designed to be a registry gate — ClawHub, MCP Registry, or any future capability registry can require signed, audited Effectors before listing them.

Architecture

effector-audit
├── scanner/          # Static analysis engine
│   ├── rules/        # Detection rules (prompt injection, exfiltration, etc.)
│   ├── analyzer.js   # AST + content analysis for SKILL.md and code
│   └── reporter.js   # Output formatting (terminal, JSON)
├── permissions/       # Permission analysis
│   └── diff.js       # Permission drift detection

Roadmap

• [x] v0.1 — Core scanner (prompt injection + exfiltration + basic permission creep signals)
• [x] v0.1 — Permission drift check (effector.toml vs detected behavior)
• [ ] v0.2 — Signing + verification
• [ ] v0.3 — Supply chain verification / SBOM
• [ ] v0.4 — GitHub Action
• [ ] v0.5 — Type contract verification (types catalog)
• [ ] v1.0 — Production-ready, registry-gate capable

Contributing

Security tooling needs adversarial thinking. We especially need:

• New detection rules — Found a new attack pattern? Submit a rule
• False positive reports — If the scanner flags legitimate patterns, we need to know
• Registry integration — Help us build gates for ClawHub, MCP Registry, and others
• Signing UX — Make signing as frictionless as possible for capability authors

License

MIT

Part of the effectorHQ studio. We build hands for AI.