quickstart

The front door for this repo. With no argument: a 30-second intro, then an offer to walk you through your first run on the canary target. With a question:…

INSTALLATION
npx skills add https://github.com/anthropics/defending-code-reference-harness --skill quickstart
Run in your project or agent environment. Adjust flags if your CLI version differs.

SKILL.md

/quickstart

Two modes, picked by whether $ARGUMENTS is empty.

  • Empty → Intro mode. Short orientation, then offer the guided first run.
  • Non-empty → Help mode. Treat $ARGUMENTS as the operator's question.

Intro mode

Keep it short and a little warm; this is the first thing a new operator sees.

Say roughly:

Welcome! This repo takes you from finding your first vulnerability to

patching at scale, using a set of Claude Code skills and an autonomous

pipeline. Two ways in: interactive skills (no setup, safe, start here)

and the autonomous pipeline (Docker, scales to hundreds of parallel

agents).

The ramp-up:

| Day 1 | Threat-model + first static scan + triage |

| Day 2 | Run the reference pipeline (C/C++) |

| Day 3-4 | Customize it for your stack |

| Week 2 | Autonomous scanning, triage, and patching |

Day-1 goal: threat-model, scan, and triage the bundled canary target.

Most teams get there before lunch.

Remind them to export CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL=<model-id> so subagents

use the same model as the session.

Then AskUserQuestion with three options:

  • Walk me through Day 1 on the canary (~10 min) → run "Guided first

run" below.

  • I have a question → ask what it is, then switch to Help mode.
  • I'll read the README → point at README.md Step 1 and stop.

Guided first run

Runs the three Step-1 skills on targets/canary, pausing after each to show

what landed on disk. These only read/write files in the repo; no sandbox

needed.

  • /threat-model bootstrap targets/canary via Task. When done, open

THREAT_MODEL.md, show the focus areas, explain in 2-3 sentences how

this steers the scan.

  • /vuln-scan targets/canary via Task. When done, open

targets/canary/VULN-FINDINGS.md, summarize the count and top 2-3

findings, point at VULN-FINDINGS.json.

  • /triage targets/canary/VULN-FINDINGS.json via Task. When done, open

TRIAGE.md, explain what changed vs. raw findings (verified, deduped,

re-ranked).

Pause for the operator between each (AskUserQuestion); don't barrel through.

Close with a one-line recap of the three artifacts on disk, then point at

README Step 2 for the execution-verified pipeline. **Never run vuln-pipeline

or anything that executes target code here**; that's Step 2 and needs

Docker + a sandbox.

Help mode

Answer the operator's question using this repo as ground truth: README,

docs/*.md, harness/*.py, dnr_harness/*.py, targets/*/config.yaml,

.claude/skills/*.

Don't answer from general knowledge when the repo has a specific answer.

Routing map

If the question is about…Read firstThen offer
running the pipelinedocs/pipeline.md, README Step 2the recon / run command
too many findings, triagedocs/triage.md/triage
porting, Java/Go/Rust/etc.docs/customizing.md, README Step 3/customize
safety, sandbox, Dockerdocs/security.mdcite; no action
rate limits, 429, token budgetdocs/pipeline.md: Rate limits, docs/troubleshooting.md#rate-limitscite the numbers
duplicates, dedupdocs/troubleshooting.md#duplicate-findingsknown_bugs: hint
CLI flags, "what does --X do"harness/cli.py (grep the argparse)exact flag + example
which model, subagent pinningdocs/troubleshooting.md: Subagentsthe export line
best practices, promptingdocs/best-practices.md, docs/prompting.mdcite the principle
threat model, attack surface, scopedocs/threat-model.md/threat-model bootstrap
scan, audit, find vulns.claude/skills/vuln-scan/SKILL.md/vuln-scan
"how do I start"README Step 1offer Guided first run
patching, fix, diff, re-attackdocs/patching.md, README Step 4/patch
threat hunting, incident response, logsdocs/detection-response.md/dnr-hunt or /dnr-respond
autonomous D&R, dnrcanarydocs/detection-response.md, targets/dnrcanary/README.mdthe dnr-pipeline run command
binary, embedded, other domainsdocs/other-use-cases.mdcite section
anything elseREADME Table of contentsbest-match doc

Answer format

  • Direct answer in 2-5 sentences.
  • > source: the file(s) and section you used.
  • Next action: one copy-pasteable command or skill invocation, if one

applies. If none does, say so.

  • If the question is ambiguous, ask one clarifying question; don't guess.

Constraints

  • Never fabricate CLI flags or file paths. If unsure, Grep for it in

harness/cli.py or the target configs and quote what you find.

  • If the repo doesn't answer the question, say so plainly and suggest the

operator open a GitHub issue on this repo.

  • Keep the Q&A dry and cited. Save the warmth for Intro mode.
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