Specification and documentation for Agent Skills
This report summarizes scanner evidence for agentskills/agentskills, a Python project with 26,028 GitHub stars. SynthScan examined 2,279 lines of code across 26 source files, recording 29 pattern matches distributed across 5 syntactic categories. The legacy adjusted pattern signal is 13.6 (Moderate pattern signal); it is not an authorship estimate.
Use the findings to ask whether maintainers can explain intent, verify dependencies, simplify unnecessary scaffolding, and focus review effort. Risk Payload v1 adds ownership, supply-chain, over-engineering, and review-effort vectors when available. These are prompts for human verification, not probabilities, security findings, or measured maintenance costs.
Use each vector to guide manual verification of the underlying findings.
Can maintainers explain intent, assumptions, and trade-offs? 20 finding(s).
Are imports declared and package/API names verified? 8 finding(s).
Are wrappers, guards, and repeated structures necessary? 18 finding(s).
Which changes need focused human review? 29 finding(s).
This chart tracks the legacy adjusted pattern score across scan runs. Changes can reflect source changes, scan coverage, or detector/scoring versions; they do not measure AI adoption or prove that a team refactored code. Compare runs only when their scoring versions are compatible. The dashed line tracks the raw pattern-hit count.
Groups findings by configured severity weight. Severity is not a confidence estimate, security rating, or proof that a package is missing. Verify imports against the project's manifests and inspect each finding in its local design context.
This horizontal bar chart shows where configured pattern scores accumulate across directories. Treat the bars as locations to inspect, not as evidence of authorship or code quality. Use the file-level findings to decide whether a directory needs a focused ownership, dependency, complexity, or review check.
The scanner identified 29 distinct pattern matches across 5 syntactic categories. Each entry below represents a discrete location in the source code where the engine recorded a detector match to inspect in context. Expand any category row to inspect the individual file paths, line numbers, code snippets, and the lexical context (CODE, COMMENT, or STRING) in which each match was detected.
Reading the findings table: The Severity column indicates the configured finding weight (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW). The Context column identifies whether the match occurred inside executable code, an inline comment, or a string literal — legacy comment-context matches receive a ×1.5 score weight. The ⚡ bolt icon marks clustered matches: three or more patterns within a 10-line window, each receiving an additional ×1.5 density multiplier under the legacy scoring model.
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 35 | def test_unclosed_frontmatter(): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 55 | def test_non_dict_frontmatter(): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 128 | def test_find_skill_md_prefers_uppercase(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 139 | def test_find_skill_md_accepts_lowercase(tmp_path): | CODE |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 150 | def test_find_skill_md_returns_none_when_missing(tmp_path): | CODE |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 158 | def test_read_properties_with_lowercase_skill_md(tmp_path): | CODE |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_parser.py | 173 | def test_read_with_allowed_tools(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_prompt.py | 55 | def test_special_characters_escaped(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 41 | def test_invalid_name_uppercase(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 81 | def test_name_consecutive_hyphens(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 94 | def test_name_invalid_characters(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 107 | def test_name_directory_mismatch(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 134 | def test_valid_with_all_fields(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 150 | def test_allowed_tools_accepted(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 221 | def test_description_too_long(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/tests/test_validator.py | 251 | def test_compatibility_too_long(tmp_path): | STRING |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/validator.py | 104 | def _validate_metadata_fields(metadata: dict) -> list[str]: | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HIGH | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/parser.py | 31 | Parse YAML frontmatter from SKILL.md content. Args: content: Raw content of SKILL.md file Returns: | STRING |
| HIGH | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/parser.py | 68 | Read skill properties from SKILL.md frontmatter. This function parses the frontmatter and returns properties. I | STRING |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 3 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 3 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 3 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 4 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 5 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 5 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 6 | CODE | |
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 7 | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | .claude/hooks/session-start.sh | 5 | # Check if Mintlify CLI is installed | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | skills-ref/src/skills_ref/__init__.py | 9 | __all__ = [ | CODE |