docs(#3247): record the capability instruction-surface trust model (#3249)

* docs(#3247): record the capability instruction-surface trust model

ADR-2363 records the trust posture for third-party capability SKILL.md
bodies, which #2322/#2340 made agent-invocable without any content-level
control. The path-level protections that fix shipped are all present; no
content scanner exists, and external-descriptor-trust.cts never had one.
Nothing was bypassed - the control did not exist and the boundary was
never written down.

D1 records the posture: skill bodies are trusted, unscanned agent
instructions. D2 rejects content scanning on Kerckhoffs (a shipped rule
set is readable by the adversary who installs it), on threat-model
non-transfer from ADR-1577 (there, instructions are anomalous inside
data; here they are the payload's legitimate form), and on Goodhart (a
scanned-OK line displaces the judgment the consent prompt exists to
provoke). D3 replaces the executable/non-executable binary with three
classes, adding instruction surface.

D4 keeps instruction surfaces out of the v1 disclosureSignature. The
signature is NOT the activation binding - hasProjectConsent compares
contentHash only, and a global install carries no consent record at all.
What re-encoding would do is perturb the signature of every skill-bearing
capability and fire a spurious re-consent prompt on its next upgrade,
which is what ADR-2782 D4 rule 5 already forbids. If instruction surfaces
ever need to be signature-bound, that lands as a versioned v2 signature
with a migration, never an in-place re-encoding.

Corrects capability-trust-model.md, which claimed skills get lighter
consent because they do not execute code - true, and not the relevant
property, since the agent is the interpreter. Adds the author-side
boundary to develop-a-capability.md and links it from
publish-a-capability.md. Both state that per-skill disclosure at the
consent prompt lands with #3248 and does not happen today.

Docs-only. No behavior change; no consent record perturbed. D5's
mechanism is Phase 1 (#3248), which is why the ADR is Proposed.

Refs #2363

* chore(#3247): backfill changeset pr number to 3249

---------

Co-authored-by: sim <sim@local>
This commit is contained in:
Tom Boucher
2026-08-09 11:47:54 -04:00
committed by GitHub
parent a5b5860b93
commit bc5619dd27
6 changed files with 208 additions and 4 deletions

View File

@@ -119,6 +119,19 @@ Choose the hook kind that matches the behaviour:
Declare file artefact flow with `produces` and `consumes`. The registry uses those arrays to order hooks and to reject unsatisfied dependencies.
## Ship skills — and know what you are shipping
A skill your Capability declares is not an inert asset. Its `SKILL.md` body is copied **verbatim** into the user's runtime skills directory at install, where it becomes an agent-invocable instruction file. GSD does **not** scan it: there is no content inspection of any kind, at install or at any later point. What you write is what reaches the agent.
That makes a skill body an **instruction surface**, and it carries author responsibility that an inert artifact does not:
- **Write instructions you would be comfortable defending.** Your reach is bounded only by what the agent will do when told. Consent, integrity pinning and reversibility are the user's protections; content review is not among them.
- **Do not embed anything that tries to redirect the agent away from the user's task** — reframing its role, overriding host instructions, or persisting directives past the skill's own scope. That is indistinguishable from a prompt-injection payload, and the fact that it is not scanned is not permission.
- **Treat anything your skill tells the agent to read as data, not instructions.** If your skill has the agent ingest a file, a URL, or tool output, say so explicitly in the body. See [the untrusted-input boundary](../adr/1577-untrusted-input-boundary-and-injection-blocking.md).
- **Expect the surface to be disclosed.** Naming the skills your Capability contributes in the pre-install consent summary lands with [#3248](https://github.com/open-gsd/gsd-core/issues/3248) — it does not happen today. Write your skill body on the assumption that a user will see it listed before they accept.
The reasoning behind this posture — including why scanning was considered and rejected — is recorded in [ADR-2363](../adr/2363-capability-instruction-surface-trust.md), and the user-facing side is [the capability trust model](../explanation/capability-trust-model.md).
## Use prompt fragments
Use `fragment.path` for prompt text longer than a short sentence: