:large_blue_diamond: Prism Scanner

Security scanner for AI Agent skills, plugins, and MCP servers.

Prism analyzes code for malicious behavior before you install it — and checks your system for leftover threats after you uninstall.

Unlike marketplace-only trust scores, Prism gives you full lifecycle coverage with code-level transparency — pre-install, runtime, and post-uninstall — across every platform, completely open source.

:sparkles: What's new in v0.2.x

P10 — Agent psychological manipulation detection: detects gaslighting, guilt-tripping, authority impersonation, urgency pressure, and emotional coercion patterns embedded in skill descriptions, prompts, and code strings. Based on Northeastern/Harvard/MIT research on conversational manipulation of AI agents — to our knowledge, the first open-source automated detector for this attack class.
M7 — Publish hygiene checks: catches source maps, .env files, private keys, IDE configs, and package-manager credentials before they ship. Inspired by Anthropic's April 2026 source-map leak that exposed 512K lines of Claude Code internals via npm. Wire it into your CI:
```
prism scan ./dist --fail-on high
```
47–93% fewer false positives on real-world skills (S1, S4, S8, S12 engine fixes; validated against 3 representative ClawHub skills that previously flooded with false flags).
41 detection rules total across S1–S14 (behavior), M1–M7 (metadata + publish hygiene), P1–P10 (patterns + manipulation), and R1–R10 (residue).
v0.2.2 fixes a cosmetic version-string mismatch (prism --version reported 0.1.3 after upgrading to 0.2.1); detection behavior is identical to v0.2.1.

Why Prism?

| | Marketplace Trust Scores | Prism Scanner | |--------------------|:------------------------:|:-----------------:| | Pre-install | :white_check_mark: Reputation score | :white_check_mark: Deep code analysis | | Post-uninstall | :x: | :white_check_mark: Residue & persistence scan | | Inspection | Black-box rating | Code-level, rule-by-rule | | Platforms | Single ecosystem | ClawHub, MCP, npm, pip | | Source | Closed | Open (Apache 2.0) | | Execution | Requires upload | Local-first, offline OK |

Quick Start

pip install prism-scanner

# Scan a local skill directory
prism scan ./my-skill/

# Scan a GitHub repo directly
prism scan https://github.com/user/skill-repo

# Check your system for agent residue
prism clean --scan

# Generate a cleanup plan (non-destructive)
prism clean --plan

# Execute cleanup with automatic backups
prism clean --apply

Homebrew (macOS)

brew tap prismlab/tools
brew install prism-scanner

npx (no install needed)

npx prism-scanner scan https://github.com/user/skill-repo

GitHub Action (CI/CD)

Add Prism to your CI pipeline — findings appear in GitHub's Security tab:

# .github/workflows/prism-scan.yml
name: Prism Security Scan
on: [push, pull_request]

permissions:
  security-events: write
  contents: read

jobs:
  scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: aidongise-cell/prism-scanner@main
        with:
          path: '.'
          fail-on: 'high'

MCP Server (Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code)

Prism Scanner can run as an MCP server, giving AI assistants direct access to security scanning tools.

pip install "prism-scanner[mcp]"

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "prism-scanner": {
      "command": "prism-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or for Claude Code:

claude mcp add prism-scanner prism-mcp

This exposes 4 tools: prism_scan, prism_grade, prism_clean_scan, prism_clean_plan.

Docker

# Build the image
docker build -t prism-scanner .

# Scan a local directory
docker run -v $(pwd)/my-skill:/workspace/target:ro prism-scanner scan /workspace/target

# Scan a remote repo
docker run prism-scanner scan https://github.com/user/skill-repo

# Generate HTML report
docker run -v $(pwd):/workspace/output prism-scanner scan https://github.com/user/repo --format html -o /workspace/output/report.html

Or use the published image:

docker run ghcr.io/prismlab/prism-scanner scan <target>

What It Detects

Prism operates across 3 analysis layers, each targeting a different phase of the agent lifecycle:

| Layer | Focus | Rules | Examples | |-------|-------|:-----:|---------| | 1. Code Behavior (S1-S14) | What the code does | 14 | Shell execution, data exfiltration, SSRF, persistence mechanisms, unsafe deserialization, download-and-execute | | 2. Metadata (M1-M6, P1-P9) | What the package claims vs. contains | 15 | Hardcoded credentials, typo-squatting, install scripts, obfuscated payloads, prompt injection, suspicious domains | | 3. System Residue (R1-R10) | What was left behind | 10 | LaunchAgents, crontab entries, shell config pollution, orphaned credentials, systemd units, login items |

Total: 39 detection rules with lightweight intra-file taint analysis.

Example Output

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Prism Scanner v0.1.0
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Target: evil_skill
  Platform: clawhub
  Duration: 42ms

[1/3] Behavior Analysis
  ✗ CRITICAL  S8    Data exfiltration: secrets sent to external endpoint  evil_skill.py:10
  ✗ CRITICAL  S10   Download and execute: fetches remote payload          evil_skill.py:24
  ✗ HIGH      S1    Shell execution with untrusted input                  evil_skill.py:14
  ✗ HIGH      S13   Persistence: writes LaunchAgent plist                 evil_skill.py:36
  ⚠ MEDIUM    S6    Dynamic code execution (eval/exec)                    evil_skill.py:21

[2/3] Metadata Analysis
  ✗ CRITICAL  P1    Hardcoded credential: AWS Access Key                  evil_skill.py:47
  ⚠ MEDIUM    P2    Base64-encoded executable content                     evil_skill.py:50
  ⚠ MEDIUM    P6    Prompt injection pattern in string literal            evil_skill.py:53

[3/3] Residue Scan
  (skipped — use `prism clean --scan` for system-level checks)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Grade: F (Critical)

  Key Risks:
    ▸ CRITICAL: Data exfiltration to external endpoint (S8)
    ▸ CRITICAL: Download and execute remote payload (S10)
    ▸ CRITICAL: Hardcoded AWS credential (P1)
    ▸ HIGH: Shell execution with user input (S1)
    ▸ HIGH: Persistence mechanism installed (S13)

  Behavior Profile:
    exfiltrates_data, executes_shell, downloads_and_executes, installs_persistence

  Recommendation: DO NOT INSTALL — Critical security risks detected.

  Findings: 3 critical, 2 high, 3 medium
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Grading System

| Grade | Label | Meaning | Recommendation | |:-----:|-------|---------|----------------| | A | Safe | No findings or only informational | Safe to use | | B | Notice | Only LOW severity findings | Likely safe — minor observations | | C | Caution | 1-4 MEDIUM findings | Review before use — warrants manual inspection | | D | Danger | 1-2 HIGH, or 5+ MEDIUM | Use in sandbox only — significant risks | | F | Critical | Any CRITICAL, or 3+ HIGH | Do not install — critical security risks |

Output Formats

# Rich terminal output (default) — color-coded severity, grade highlighting
prism scan ./skill/

# Machine-readable JSON
prism scan ./skill/ --format json

# Standalone HTML report — dark-themed, self-contained, shareable
prism scan ./skill/ --format html -o report.html

# SARIF for GitHub Code Scanning
prism scan ./skill/ --format sarif -o results.sarif

HTML Report

Generate a standalone, self-contained HTML report with full findings, grade visualization, and risk breakdown — perfect for sharing with teammates or archiving:

prism scan https://github.com/user/skill-repo --format html -o report.html

The HTML report features a dark-themed UI with color-coded severity levels, an interactive grade ring, and a complete findings table. No external dependencies — just open the .html file in any browser.

CI/CD Integration

Add Prism to your GitHub Actions workflow to gate deployments on security findings:

name: Security Scan
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  prism-scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.12"

      - name: Install Prism Scanner
        run: pip install prism-scanner

      - name: Run security scan
        run: prism scan . --format sarif -o results.sarif --fail-on high

      - name: Upload SARIF results
        if: always()
        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        with:
          sarif_file: results.sarif

The --fail-on flag exits with code 1 if any finding meets or exceeds the specified severity (critical, high, or medium), failing the CI pipeline.

Key Features

Taint Analysis — Tracks data flow from sources (env vars, user input) to sinks (shell, network) within each file
Multi-Platform — Scans ClawHub skills, MCP servers, npm packages, and pip packages with platform-aware rules
Zero Dependencies on Target — Pure static analysis; never executes scanned code
Residue Scanner — Detects persistence mechanisms, shell config pollution, and credential leaks left by uninstalled tools
Safe Cleanup — Three-tier workflow (scan -> plan -> apply) with automatic backup and --rollback
Suppression — Use .prismignore to suppress known findings by rule ID with justification
Offline Mode — Run with --offline to skip all external lookups

Adding Custom Rules

Detection rules are defined in YAML files under the rules/ directory:

rules/
├── malicious_signatures.yaml   # Known malicious code signatures and hashes
├── permissions.yaml            # Permission baseline definitions
└── suspicious_domains.yaml     # C2 domains, dynamic DNS, disposable TLDs

The pattern engine (P1-P9) and manifest engine (M1-M6) load rules from these files at scan time. Add entries to extend detection without modifying Python code.

Project Structure

src/prism/
├── cli.py                  # CLI entry point and output formatting
├── scanner.py              # Orchestrator — runs engines, collects findings
├── models.py               # Finding, ScanResult, Severity, Layer data models
├── scoring.py              # Letter-grade risk assessment (A-F)
├── report.py               # HTML report generator
├── fetcher.py              # Git clone / URL fetching with security guards
├── cleaner.py              # System cleanup: plan, apply, rollback
├── suppression.py          # .prismignore parsing
├── rules_loader.py         # YAML rule loading
└── engines/
    ├── ast_engine.py       # AST-based analysis (S1-S14)
    ├── pattern_engine.py   # Regex pattern matching (P1-P9)
    ├── manifest_engine.py  # Metadata & manifest analysis (M1-M6)
    ├── residue_engine.py   # System residue scanner (R1-R10)
    └── taint.py            # Intra-file taint tracking

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on:

Adding new detection rules
Writing and running tests
Code style and commit conventions

License

Apache License 2.0 — free for commercial and personal use.

Prism Verified Badge

Show that your project has been scanned by Prism. Add a badge to your README:

Grade A (Safe):

[![Prism Grade A](https://img.shields.io/badge/Prism-Grade%20A-brightgreen?style=flat-square&logo=data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHZpZXdCb3g9IjAgMCAyNCAyNCIgZmlsbD0id2hpdGUiPjxwYXRoIGQ9Ik0xMiAxTDMgNXY2YzAgNS41NSAzLjg0IDEwLjc0IDkgMTIgNS4xNi0xLjI2IDktNi40NSA5LTEyVjVsLTktNHoiLz48L3N2Zz4=)](https://github.com/aidongise-cell/prism-scanner)

All grades:

| Grade | Badge | |:-----:|-------| | A | ![Prism Grade A](https://img.shields.io/badge/Prism-Grade%20A-brightgreen?style=flat-square) | | B | ![Prism Grade B](https://img.shields.io/badge/Prism-Grade%20B-green?style=flat-square) | | C | ![Prism Grade C](https://img.shields.io/badge/Prism-Grade%20C-yellow?style=flat-square) | | D | ![Prism Grade D](https://img.shields.io/badge/Prism-Grade%20D-orange?style=flat-square) | | F | ![Prism Grade F](https://img.shields.io/badge/Prism-Grade%20F-red?style=flat-square) |

Preview:

Support

If Prism Scanner helped you catch a security risk or gave you peace of mind, please consider giving it a ⭐ on GitHub — it helps others discover the project and keeps development going.

Acknowledgments

Prism Scanner is developed by Prism Lab to address a gap in the AI agent ecosystem: the lack of transparent, code-level security tooling that works across platforms and covers the full agent lifecycle. We believe developers deserve to understand exactly what a skill or plugin does before trusting it with their system.

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