vulkro inspect

Surface the malicious-capability shapes in a just-cloned project so a human can review them before running any of its code. This is defensive tooling: an "antivirus for source you have not run yet".

inspect projects the shipped mal_* detectors into a grouped capability surface (credential exfiltration, install hooks, reverse shells, obfuscation, trojan-source text, and so on) and prints each site to review by hand.

inspect never certifies code clean

There is no clean / safe / pass / proceed state, and no zero-count reassurance. Every report carries this disclosure verbatim:

This is a static scan of code that has not run, over source an author may have crafted to evade it: it surfaces behaviors for a human to review and can never certify the code free of malicious behavior.

An empty result renders as "No known malicious-capability shapes were surfaced in 0 findings. This is not a safety guarantee." That wording is enforced by test: the renderer refuses to emit the words clean, safe, proceed, or allow in either the empty or the non-empty case.

Usage

vulkro inspect [PATH]

Argument	Description	Default
PATH	Path to the project root to inspect.	.

Flags

Flag	Description
--json	Emit the machine-readable capability manifest (the CapabilityReport structure) as JSON instead of the text surface. Intended for an agent to consume before running code. The JSON always carries the non-guarantee disclosure and never a safe / clean / proceed verdict.

How it differs from scan

Unlike vulkro scan, inspect uses the unfiltered finding set. It deliberately ignores the vuln-scan precision floor (scan's default --min-confidence) so that Medium-confidence shapes - for example a committed opaque binary - are never hidden. A malware shape that would be dropped by the confidence floor still reaches your eyes here.

scan answers "is this code vulnerable". inspect answers "what can this code do if I run it".

Capability groups

Each mal- evidence signal maps to one capability bucket. The surface groups hits by bucket, sorted by count descending then label ascending.

Capability	What it means	Signal
Hidden or misleading source text (trojan source)	Unicode bidi overrides, homoglyph or invisible-character tricks that make the rendered source differ from what a compiler or interpreter sees.	mal-trojan-source
Opens a shell or reads instance metadata (backdoor shape)	A reverse shell, an nc -e backdoor, or a cloud instance-metadata (IMDS) credential grab.	mal-reverse-shell, mal-imds
Reads credentials or secret files	Reads a credential store or secret file (~/.ssh, ~/.aws, keychains, token files).	mal-cred-read
Reads and exfiltrates credentials	Reads credentials and sends them off the machine in the same file.	mal-cred-exfil
Runs code from an install or build hook	Code that runs from a package or build install hook (git hook, setup.py, build.rs, Makefile fetch-pipe).	mal-install-hook
Obfuscated or packed source	Heavy base64 / hex blobs, dynamic decode into eval, string-array unpacking.	mal-obfuscation
Execution gated on environment, date, or host (logic-bomb shape)	Execution fenced behind an environment, date, hostname, or not-in-CI gate.	mal-env-gate
Self-propagating / worm behavior	Source that copies or re-publishes itself across packages or repos.	mal-worm
Reads or targets cryptocurrency wallet material	Wallet files, seed phrases, clipboard address swap.	mal-wallet
Fetches and runs remote code	Download-and-eval, remote module load at runtime.	mal-remote-load
Installs persistence on the machine	Cron, launchd, systemd, shell-rc, autostart.	mal-persist
Committed opaque binary the scanners cannot read	A committed native binary or executable blob the source scanners cannot read: the xz-utils blind spot.	mal-committed-binary
Dependency-integrity anomaly	Lockfile / manifest mismatch, integrity-hash gap.	mal-dep-integrity
Prompt-injection payload aimed at an AI agent	A payload aimed at an AI agent reading the repo.	mal-prompt-injection
Other malicious-capability shape	Any other mal- signal that does not map to a named bucket. Newly added detectors land here rather than dropping out of the surface.	any other mal-*

Individual sites carry a MAL-* rule id parsed from the finding message (for example MAL-EXFIL-001, MAL-HOOK-003, MAL-TROJAN-002), or the raw mal- signal when the message has no id prefix.

Text output

The default view lists each capability group with its count, then up to three example sites, then a ... and N more site(s) line when the group has more. The disclosure closes the report.

Capability surface: 4 malicious-capability finding(s) across 2 capability group(s).
Each item below is a behavior to review by hand, not a verdict.

- Reads and exfiltrates credentials (3 finding(s))
    MAL-EXFIL-001 at scripts/postinstall.js:12
    MAL-EXFIL-001 at scripts/postinstall.js:31
    MAL-EXFIL-001 at src/telemetry.js:8
- Runs code from an install or build hook (1 finding(s))
    MAL-HOOK-002 at package.json:14

JSON output

--json emits the CapabilityReport structure:

Field	Description
capabilities[]	One entry per capability bucket: capability, label, count, and hits[].
capabilities[].hits[]	Each site: file, line (1-based), rule_id, and the verbatim finding message.
total_findings	Total malicious-capability findings projected (the sum of all counts).
disclosure	The non-guarantee sentence, carried on the report so every consumer renders it.

There is no verdict field. Nothing in the JSON says safe, clean, or proceed.

Exit codes

• 0 ran and surfaced no known malicious-capability shapes. This is not a pass and not a safety guarantee: static analysis over unrun, potentially adversarial source cannot see everything.
• 1 malicious-capability shapes were surfaced: human review is required before trusting or running this code.
• 2 error (bad path, IO failure, internal crash).

Privacy

inspect renders locally. No finding data leaves the machine.

Examples

# Review a repo you just cloned, before running its install script.
git clone https://example.com/some/repo && cd repo
vulkro inspect .

# Machine-readable manifest for an agent to read before running code.
vulkro inspect . --json > capabilities.json

From an AI agent

The same surface is exposed over MCP as the inspect_repo tool, so an agent can check a repository before running any of its code. See vulkro mcp.

Not to be confused with

vulkro-live inspect is a different command in the free Vulkro Labs CLI: it answers "is this MCP server safe to add" by resolving a server spec to its backing registry package. vulkro inspect reviews source you already have on disk.

Related

• vulkro scan - the full security pipeline, with the confidence floor applied.
• vulkro guard - the in-loop gate.
• vulkro mcp - the inspect_repo MCP tool.
• Confidence model - the precision floor that inspect deliberately bypasses.