security: narrow skill grants, ship ask/deny rules, guard skill frontmatter, GET-only 403 retry (#642)

* security(skills): drop bare Bash and the portal CLI glob from skill grants

A skill's allowed-tools pre-approves the listed tools for the turn that
invokes it, even in an untrusted folder. job-application-assistant granted
bare Bash, Edit and Write; job-scraper granted bun run on any
.agents/skills/*/cli/src/cli.ts. Every Bash command the skills document is
already allowlisted per command in .claude/settings.json, so the bare and
glob grants bought nothing but exposure. The per-portal grants stay in
settings.json, which is where a portal added by /add-portal registers too
(Step 5 now says so).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* security(settings): deny exfil-shaped shell and credential reads, always ask on permission-defining files

Deny rules block in every permission mode including bypassPermissions and
override any allow rule or skill grant; ask rules force a prompt even when
a skill's allowed-tools would pre-approve the call. settings.json now
ships both: deny for shell that uploads or opens a remote shell (curl
data/form/upload flags, wget post, scp, sftp, ssh, nc) and for reads of
.env and ~/.ssh, ~/.aws, ~/.gnupg; ask for the files whose content is the
permission surface (settings, skill frontmatter, agents, CI, this guard)
and for git push. security_guards.py requires each rule to stay present,
the same way it requires the personal-data gitignore rules. Prefix rules
are tripwires, not walls; SECURITY.md will say so.

Also allowlists tools/robots_check.py and the upcoming tools/fetch_page.py
so the 403 retry no longer needs a curl grant.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* security(guards): hold skill and command allowed-tools to a reviewed allowlist

The guard allowlisted settings.json permissions but never read skill
frontmatter, so the narrow settings allowlist sat next to a bare Bash
grant it could not see. Check 4 parses every .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md,
.agents/skills/*/SKILL.md and .claude/commands/*.md frontmatter with a
stdlib parser (scalar, folded, and list forms) and holds each
allowed-tools entry to ALLOWED_SKILL_TOOLS; a portal skill may
additionally grant exactly its own cli/src/cli.ts, matched by path so no
portal name is hardcoded. Bare Bash and mid-pattern wildcards get their
own message. On master's frontmatter this check reports two failures.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* feat(tools): add GET-only fetch_page.py for the browser-header retry

09-web-research.md documented the 403 retry as a curl command with browser
headers plus an inline python3 -c tag-stripper, which meant the workflow
wanted a Bash(curl:*) grant - and curl with a free tail is an upload
channel. fetch_page.py is the same retry as one command with a fixed GET
argv (URL after --, bounded to 45 s / 5 redirects / 10 MB), http(s) only,
robots_check.gate() enforced with no bypass flag, --out refused inside
the repo, and --text for the stripped page. urllib fallback when curl is
absent. The settings.json grant names the script.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs(security): describe the permission surface as a table; route the 403 retry through fetch_page.py

SECURITY.md now lists every shipped grant with its location, lifetime
and guard, and says plainly what the permission layer does not do: no
sandbox on native Windows, prefix rules are tripwires, WebFetch is
unrestricted by domain, subagents run with the parent's tools (next
change), and Edit/Write stay granted because tailoring a CV is editing
files. 09-web-research.md's retry section is the one fetch_page.py
command (framework_version 1.1.3 -> 1.1.4); apply, rank and scrape point
at it instead of curl. SETUP.md and the README tools tree follow.
CHANGELOG gains a Security section under [Unreleased].

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* security(review): ask on command frontmatter, portal skills grant only their CLI, bound the urllib fallback

Findings from a fresh-context review of the branch:

- A command's frontmatter is a grant too (check 4 already parses it), so
  Edit(.claude/commands/*.md) joins the required ask rules; without it a
  steered session could write `allowed-tools: Bash` into apply.md with no
  prompt and the next /apply would be pre-approved for bare Bash.
- SECURITY.md promised a portal skill may grant "its own CLI and nothing
  else"; the guard now enforces exactly that instead of own-CLI plus the
  core allowlist. All six shipped portal skills already comply.
- fetch_page.py's urllib fallback now matches curl's 5-redirect cap and
  applies the 10 MB cap after decompression, so the docstring's bounds
  hold on both paths.
- Frontmatter parser: a BOM no longer reads as "missing frontmatter",
  YAML flow lists split correctly, and a non-UTF-8 file fails with a
  message instead of a traceback. Module docstring lists check 4.
- CHANGELOG no longer claims "no new prompt": compile and aux cleanup,
  which the removed bare Bash covered in a skill-invoking turn, now
  prompt, deliberately. "Once per session" wording corrected to per call.
- Three upload-shaped deny siblings added (curl -XPOST, curl --request
  POST, wget --method=POST); /add-portal recon points at fetch_page.py.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

SETUP.md

@@ -344,7 +344,7 @@ Make sure Bun is installed and you ran `bun install` in each CLI directory. The
 The cover letter template expects fonts in `cover_letters/OpenFonts/fonts/`. Make sure this directory exists and contains the Lato and Raleway font files.
 
 ### Stale `.claude/settings.local.json` from an older clone
-Shared Claude Code permissions now live in `.claude/settings.json` (scoped to `bun run`, `python salary_lookup.py`, and `python3 salary_lookup.py`). Earlier versions of this repo committed a broader `.claude/settings.local.json` that pre-approved `Bash(curl:*)`, `Bash(python:*)` and `Bash(bun:*)`. If you cloned before that change, git leaves the old file behind in your working copy, and its permissions still apply on top of `settings.json`. Delete it (or trim it to your own personal overrides):
+Shared Claude Code permissions now live in `.claude/settings.json`: an `allow` list scoped to the exact commands the workflow runs (each portal CLI by path, the `tools/` scripts, `salary_lookup.py`, `pdftotext`), an `ask` list that always prompts before the permission-defining files are edited or `git push` runs, and a `deny` list that blocks upload-shaped shell and reads of credential files in every mode. `SECURITY.md` has the full table. Earlier versions of this repo committed a broader `.claude/settings.local.json` that pre-approved `Bash(curl:*)`, `Bash(python:*)` and `Bash(bun:*)`. If you cloned before that change, git leaves the old file behind in your working copy, and its permissions still apply on top of `settings.json`. Delete it (or trim it to your own personal overrides):
 
 ```bash
 rm .claude/settings.local.json