mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Toward User Comprehension Supports for LLM Agent Skill Specifications

arXiv 2605.19362 ↗First posted 19 May 2026cs.HC cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance

Abstract (arXiv)

Users often interpret and select agent skills through their SKILL markdown specifications. To protect users, existing audits mainly focus on malicious or unsafe skills. We study the complementary question of whether specifications help users form bounded expectations about what a skill consumes, produces, and covers. Across 878 cybersecurity skills, we used rule-based coding to measure textual cues for four comprehension anchors, namely operational basis, output contract, boundary disclosure, and example capability demonstration. Cues for operational basis were common, but only 19.0% of specifications exhibited cues for an example task, sample, or expected outcome, and only 2.3% exhibited cues for all four anchors. We further examined a small DNS/C2 telemetry subset (n=6) to illustrate why missing examples may matter. Examples appeared to make first local checks easier to construct, while no-example skills typically required helper code inspection to recover command arguments or output fields. We argue that agent-skill evaluation should treat specifications as user-facing capability disclosures, not merely as containers for executable instructions.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 0 of its 18 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 19 May 2026.

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  5. 2026Agent Skills in the Wild: An Empirical Study of Security Vulnerabilities at Scale
  6. 2026An Empirical Study of Agent Skills' Downstream Utility
  7. 2026"Do Not Mention This to the User": Detecting and Understanding Malicious Agent Skills in the Wild
  8. 2026Agent Skills Can Be Harmful: An Empirical Study of Skill-Induced Failures in LLM Agents