mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

OpenSkillRisk: Benchmarking Agent Safety When Using Real-World Risky Third-Party Skills

arXiv 2607.20121 ↗First posted 22 Jul 2026cs.CLcited by 3

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

Abstract (arXiv)

LLM-based agents leverage third-party skills to extend their capabilities in open-world scenarios. However, third-party skills can introduce extra security vulnerabilities, as seemingly harmless skills can contain latent safety risks that only emerge during actual execution. In this work, we conduct a systematic investigation into how well current agent systems recognize and avoid such risks. To support quantitative and qualitative evaluation, we construct OpenSkillRisk, a dedicated safety benchmark containing 263 risky skills collected from public skill marketplaces. We classify these skills into seven categories based on their threat types and pair each skill with a standardized user task and a corresponding sandbox for controlled evaluation. Distinct from prior benchmarks, OpenSkillRisk not only covers more realistic and diverse unsafe scenarios, but also provides a fine-grained analysis to diagnose the behavioral patterns of agents in such scenarios. We conduct comprehensive experiments covering three mainstream CLI agent frameworks and thirteen state-of-the-art LLMs. Experimental results show that no tested system handles risky skills reliably: even the safest configurations still execute unsafe actions in about 17% of cases. Context-dependent and system-level risks are especially difficult for current agent systems to avoid. Our behavioral analysis reveals three recurring failure patterns: agents may fail to recognize the risk, recognize it but fail to intervene before acting, or follow skill instructions beyond the user's intended scope. These findings highlight the need to improve both risk reasoning in LLMs and execution control in agent frameworks.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 17 of its 44 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Jul 2026.

Builds on

17 of 44 references.

Closest ancestors · 10

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Your Agent, Their Asset: A Real-World Safety Analysis of OpenClaw6 Apr
  2. 2026AgentHazard: A Benchmark for Evaluating Harmful Behavior in Computer-Use Agents3 Apr
  3. 2026ATBench: A Diverse and Realistic Agent Trajectory Benchmark for Safety Evaluation and Diagnosis2 Apr
  4. 2026Skill-Inject: Measuring Agent Vulnerability to Skill File Attacks23 Feb
  5. 2026SkillJect: Effectively Automating Skill-Based Prompt Injection for Skill-Enabled Agents15 Feb
  6. 2026Agent Skills in the Wild: An Empirical Study of Security Vulnerabilities at Scale15 Jan
  7. 2025Agent Skills Enable a New Class of Realistic and Trivially Simple Prompt Injections30 Oct
  8. 2025Progent: Securing AI Agents with Privilege Control16 Apr
  9. 2025Prompt Flow Integrity to Prevent Privilege Escalation in LLM Agents17 Mar
  10. 2024Agent-SafetyBench: Evaluating the Safety of LLM Agents19 Dec

Other references · 7

  1. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  2. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  3. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  4. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
  5. 2026SoK: Agentic Skills -- Beyond Tool Use in LLM Agentscited by 130
  6. 2026SWE-Skills-Bench: Do Agent Skills Actually Help in Real-World Software Engineering?cited by 82
  7. 2026ClawsBench: Evaluating Capability and Safety of LLM Productivity Agents in Simulated Workspacescited by 33

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026SkillSafetyBench: Evaluating Agent Safety under Skill-Facing Attack Surfaces
  2. 2025OpenAgentSafety: A Comprehensive Framework for Evaluating Real-World AI Agent Safety
  3. 2026When Safe Skills Collide: Measuring Compositional Risk in Agent Skill Ecosystems
  4. 2026SkillVetBench: LLM-as-Judge for Multi-Dimensional Security Risk Evaluation in Open-Source LLM Agent Skills
  5. 2026SkillHarm: Lifecycle-Aware Skill-Based Attacks via Automated Construction
  6. 2026AgentTrap: Measuring Runtime Trust Failures in Third-Party Agent Skills
  7. 2026Benchmarking Security Risk Detection and Verification in Open Agentic Skill Ecosystems
  8. 2026Risky-Bench: Probing Agentic Safety Risks under Real-World Deployment