application-security-testing

SKILL.md

Application security testing

Entry point for "make my application secure" requests, where the target is not yet a single URL or repo. The job here is to pick the right test per asset, run it, and produce one ranked plan — not to run everything at maximum depth.

Install, LLM setup, all CLI flags, and the managed-cloud path live in the penetration-testing-with-strix skill. Read it first if strix --version fails. For a run with no Docker and no LLM key, the same binary drives the managed platform: strix cloud login, then strix cloud scans start ... (details in managed-pentesting-with-strix).

Only test assets the user owns or is authorized to test. Confirm authorization before the first run, and prefer staging over production, because the agents send real exploit payloads and can change data.

1. Map the assets

Ask (or read from the repo) and write the answers down before scanning:

Source — one repo, a monorepo, several services? Which languages/frameworks?

Running environments — is there a staging deployment? A public production site? A local dev server only?

APIs — REST, GraphQL, gRPC? Is there an OpenAPI/GraphQL schema?

Authentication — can you get two test accounts in different tenants? Most high-impact bugs need them.

Constraints — out-of-scope paths, whether production may be touched, budget and wall-clock limits.

If there is no staging environment and production is off limits, say so early. A code-only review is still valuable, but it cannot prove exploitability against a live app.