amend-skill

Amend Skill

Purpose

Skills degrade over time as targets change, new bypass techniques emerge, and failure patterns accumulate. This skill closes the feedback loop: it reads execution history, identifies what is systematically failing, and proposes a minimal surgical amendment to the skill.

Trigger Conditions

Activate this skill when:

• User says "improve this skill", "fix this skill", "update this skill", "amend this skill"
• User says "why does X keep failing" where X is a skill name
• User says "add this to the skill" after describing a new technique that worked
• observations/<skill-name>/runs.md contains 3 or more entries with outcome: fail

Methodology

1. Identify the target skill — confirm the skill name with the user if ambiguous.
2. Read the skill — load skills/<bucket>/<category>/<skill-name>/SKILL.md in full.
3. Read the observations — load observations/<skill-name>/runs.md.
4. Analyze failure patterns:
   • Which steps consistently fail?
   • Which payloads are blocked or produce wrong output?
   • Which trigger conditions are missing or too broad?
   • Are there new bypass techniques that worked but aren't documented?
   • Is the output format causing downstream confusion?
5. Formulate a single targeted amendment — one focused change rather than a full rewrite. The amendment should be one of:
   • Tighten trigger: remove or refine a trigger condition that causes false activation
   • Add missing condition: add a step, payload, or bypass that is now needed
   • Reorder steps: move a high-value step earlier to avoid wasted time
   • Fix payload: update an outdated payload that no longer works
   • Change output format: restructure how the skill presents findings
6. Output the amendment as a unified diff — show old text and proposed new text side by side.
7. Ask for confirmation — do not apply until the user approves.
8. Apply and record — edit the SKILL.md, then append to observations/<skill-name>/runs.md:

---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
skill: <skill-name>
task: Amendment applied via amend-skill
outcome: amendment
what_worked: |
  <describe what the amendment changes and why>
what_failed: |
  <describe the failure pattern that motivated the amendment>
errors: |
  N/A
notes: |
  Amendment type: <tighten-trigger | add-condition | reorder-steps | fix-payload | change-output>
  Rationale: <one-sentence reason>
---

Example Interaction

User: "why does sql-injection keep failing on this target?"

Process:

1. Read skills/owasp-wstg/injection/sql-injection/SKILL.md
2. Read observations/sql-injection/runs.md — finds 3 fail entries, all noting WAF blocking ' and --
3. Analysis: Bypass section exists but WAF-specific encoding variants not prominent enough in step 2
4. Amendment: Move WAF bypass step earlier in Methodology, add a WAF detection pre-step

Output:

-2. Submit `'`, `"`, `;`, `--`, `/* */` individually and observe response differences.
-3. Confirm with boolean pair: append `AND 1=1--` (true) vs `AND 1=2--` (false).
+2. Check for WAF: submit `'` and observe whether the response is a WAF block page (uniform
+   error regardless of input) vs. a database error (input-specific). If WAF present, use
+   encoding variants from the Bypass Techniques section before confirming injection.
+3. Submit `'`, `"`, `;`, `--`, `/* */` individually. If WAF present, substitute with
+   `%27`, `%2D%2D`, and comment fragmentation `UN/**/ION`.
+4. Confirm with boolean pair: `AND 1=1--` vs `AND 1=2--`.

Fix Patterns

This is a meta-skill — it has no fix patterns of its own. Its output is an amendment to another skill's fix patterns.