Universal Skill Format v1.0

This specification defines a platform-agnostic manifest for agentic skills. Its goal is to preserve security properties when skills are reused across ecosystems and to mitigate AST10.

Design Goals

Normalize security metadata across platforms.
Preserve permission intent during format translation.
Provide machine-readable provenance and integrity signals.
Enable policy-based governance without per-skill manual review.

Canonical YAML Manifest

---
# Universal Agentic Skill Format v1.0
# Compatible with: OpenClaw, Claude Code, Cursor/Codex, VS Code

name: example-skill
version: 1.0.0
platforms: [openclaw, claude, cursor, vscode]

description: "Safe example skill - concise, honest statement of function"
author:
  name: "Author Name"
  identity: "did:web:example.com"
  signing_key: "ed25519:pubkey_hex_here"

permissions:
  files:
    read:
      - ~/.config/app.json
    write:
      - ~/.config/app.json
    deny_write:
      - SOUL.md
      - MEMORY.md
      - AGENTS.md
  network:
    allow:
      - api.example.com
    deny: "*"
  shell: false
  tools:
    - web_fetch
    - read_file

requires:
  binaries: [jq, curl]
  min_runtime_version: "2026.1.0"

risk_tier: L1
scan_status:
  scanner: "[email protected]"
  last_scanned: "2026-02-15"
  result: "pass"

signature: "ed25519:ABCDEF1234567890..."
content_hash: "sha256:abcdef1234..."

changelog:
  - version: "1.0.0"
    date: "2026-02-01"
    notes: "Initial release"
---

Field Rationale

permissions.deny_write: protects identity-critical files unless explicitly overridden.
network.allow + network.deny: supports egress allowlisting and default-deny behavior.
signature and content_hash: allows integrity verification and transparency logging.
scan_status: establishes provenance for scanner version, scan date, and verdict.
risk_tier: enables automated governance policies and approvals.

Validation Requirements

A compliant manifest SHOULD satisfy:

Required top-level fields: name, version, description, permissions, risk_tier, content_hash.
permissions.network.deny set to "*" unless explicit exception policy exists.
signature present for production distribution.
scan_status.last_scanned in ISO-8601 date format.

OWASP AST Crosswalk

AST01 / AST02: integrity and provenance controls (signature, content_hash).
AST03 / AST04: least-privilege and explicit metadata normalization.
AST08 / AST09: scanner provenance and governance-ready risk tiering.
AST10: cross-platform semantic consistency.

Last updated: April 2026

Example

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Leadership & Founding Members

Project Leadership

Current Leaders

Ken Huang

Hammad Atta

Fabio Cerullo

Aonan Guan

Bhavya Gupta

Niv Hoffman

Iftach Orr

Akram Sheriff

AIVSS Distinguished Review Board

The OWASP AIVSS project’s Distinguished Review Board comprises world-renowned cybersecurity leaders, former government officials, and industry pioneers who provide strategic guidance and expert oversight for the AI Vulnerability Scoring System framework. We thank them for their guidance, several of whom have also supported this project’s work.

Rob Joyce

Advisor to PwC and OpenAI, Former Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator

Jason Clinton

Deputy CISO, Anthropic

Amy R. Steagall

Chief Information Security Officer, Stanford University

Martin Stanley

AI Risk Management Framework Lead, NIST

Apostol Vassilev

Research Supervisor, NIST

Andrew Coyne

CISO, Banner Health, Former CISO, Mayo Clinic

Kevin Rocque

Managing Director/Executive Vice President, Global Technology Risk Officer, TD Bank

Jeff Williams

Former Global OWASP Chair, Founder and CTO, Contrast Security

Michael Tran Duff

University Chief Information Security and Data Privacy Officer, Harvard University

Emil Bender Lassen

Standards Lead, AIUC-1

Agentic Skills Top 10 Founding Members

Founding members of the OWASP Agentic Skills Top 10 project itself — project leads, co-leads, and additional contributors — listed alphabetically. Several also contribute to the sibling OWASP AIVSS project listed above.