Use when the user has concrete failing cases in code or a guardrail/classifier/filter/prompt/API they own — a red-team failure catalogue OR a CI/CD test-failure report (failing pytest/JUnit tests) — and wants the target patched until those failures are closed without breaking what already works. It points straight at the failed cases (normalize any source with tools/ingest.py), fixes one root-cause class per iteration, and re-checks with tools/verify.py — oracle mode against a red-team oracle, or tests mode against the test suite — keeping a patch only if it closes a class while nothing that passed before regresses, else reverting; loops until every class is closed (dry) or the budget runs out, then opens a pull request with the patch set. The defensive fixer half of a find→fix setup. Not for discovering new failures (that is red-team), and not for editing the oracle, tests, or holdout that define ground truth.
Installation
Install with Codex or Claude Copy this prompt, paste it into Codex, Claude, or another assistant, and let it review the skill page and install it for you.
Use when the user has concrete failing cases in code or a guardrail/classifier/filter/prompt/API they own — a red-team failure catalogue OR a CI/CD test-failure report (failing pytest/JUnit tests) — and wants the target patched until those failures are closed without breaking what already works. It points straight at the failed cases (normalize any source with tools/ingest.py), fixes one root-cause class per iteration, and re-checks with tools/verify.py — oracle mode against a red-team oracle, or tests mode against the test suite — keeping a patch only if it closes a class while nothing that passed before regresses, else reverting; loops until every class is closed (dry) or the budget runs out, then opens a pull request with the patch set. The defensive fixer half of a find→fix setup. Not for discovering new failures (that is red-team), and not for editing the oracle, tests, or holdout that define ground truth.
compatibility
Requires Python 3.9+; git + the gh CLI for the pull-request handoff (degrades to a patch series).
metadata
{"version":"0.1.0"}
Blue Team
A defensive fixer loop — the inverse of red-team. The artifact is the target, now writable;
the feedback signal is two-part, like optimize-loop: a gate that must hold (nothing that passed
before regresses) and a metric that must drop (the count of open failure classes, toward zero). You
point it at a set of concrete failed cases and fix them one root-cause class at a time. Each
iteration you patch one class, then run tools/verify.py, and keep the patch only if it closes the class
with no regression, else revert. You loop until every class is closed (dry) or the budget runs out,
then hand the patch set off as a pull request. This is the fix half of a find→fix setup (see
Pairing).
The failed cases come from a real source; tools/ingest.py normalizes any of them into one catalogue:
oracle mode — a red-teamfailures.jsonl: each case is an input where the target's verdict
disagrees with a ground-truth oracle. A case is closed when target and oracle now agree; a
regression is a benign <holdout> input that newly disagrees (most often a new over-block).
tests mode — a CI/CD test-failure report (pytest --junitxml / JUnit XML, or a list of
failing node ids): each case is a failing test. A case is closed when its test now passes; a
regression is any other test that was passing and now fails.
When to use
Use to fix a concrete set of failing cases in code or a guardrail/classifier/filter/prompt/API the user
owns — a red-team catalogue, or the failing tests from a CI run — driving the open-class count to zero
without breaking what worked. A class is the root-cause group the loop closes as a unit (a red-team
technique, or a CI failure area / test class).
Default: pick the mode that matches the source (oracle for red-team, tests for CI/CD). Escape hatch:
in oracle mode with no separate functional test suite, the <holdout> alone is the regression guard;
in tests mode the suite's own previously-passing tests are the guard. Not for finding new failures (run
red-team), and not for editing the ground truth (the oracle, the tests, or the holdout).
Setup
Resolve bindings interactively. If loop.run.yaml exists, load it, confirm the values in one line, and
skip to the loop. Otherwise: on Claude Code (the AskUserQuestion tool is available) infer a likely
value per binding and recommend it; on other hosts ask each as a quoted prompt. Then write
loop.run.yaml and confirm before creating any other files. Two worked configs:
examples/run.example.yaml (oracle mode) and examples/tests.run.yaml (tests mode).
binding
meaning
default
how to infer
<source>
where the failed cases come from: oracle (red-team) or tests (CI/CD)
Either way it prints one JSON object:
{mode, open_classes, closed_classes, open_count, closed_count, regressions, regression_count, still_failing}.
The loop
Copy this checklist and tick items off:
Iteration 0 — baseline: run tools/verify.py in the <source> mode; record the open classes
(should match the catalogue) as the current state and confirm regression_count is 0 — if it is
not, the catalogue or holdout is dirty, so fix that before fixing the target. Log the baseline row.
Save a pristine copy of <target_files> to <sandbox_root>/iter0/ (snapshots mode) or note the
branch base (branches mode) — this is the baseline the final handoff diffs against, and also
the snapshot iteration 1 reverts to.
In branches mode, open the run on a fresh branch: git checkout -b <pr_branch>.
For iteration N (≥1): snapshot the current, pre-patch<target_files> to iter<N>/ (or note
the git HEAD) before
editing, so a discard can restore exactly this state.
Pick one open class. Read its still_failing examples + the suggested fix from the catalogue,
and patch <target_files> at the root cause — one fix should close all payloads of that
class (e.g. normalize case once, not per-keyword). One class per iteration so each delta is
attributable.
Check the signal: run tools/verify.py. Discard — restore the snapshot / git reset --hard —
if regression_count > 0 (the gate) or the targeted class is still open. verify.py's regression
check is the gate: in oracle mode a regression is a newly-broken <holdout> case (e.g. a fix
that closes a bypass by over-blocking benign inputs); in tests mode it is any previously-passing
test the patch broke.
Keep if there are no regressions and open_count strictly dropped. In branches mode commit
it: git commit -am "close <class>: <one-line fix>". Append a ledger row.
If a class resists <patience> attempts, mark it an open residual and move on rather than
thrashing. Stop when open_count = 0 (dry), at <budget>, or when every remaining class is a
residual. <budget> counts attempts (each keep or discard is one iteration), not classes
closed — a discard still consumes the budget.
On stop, restore the working files to the best iteration (most classes closed, zero regressions) and
report: classes closed vs residual, the failures resolved (oracle mode: the bypass/over-block split),
and regressions avoided. Then open the pull request (see Handoff).
Fix toolkit. In tests mode the patches are ordinary bug-fixes, grouped by failure area and applied
one area per iteration. In oracle mode (hardening a guardrail/filter), reach for these root-cause
patterns, mirroring red-team's attack toolkit:
Normalize before matching — case-fold, de-leet (homoglyph/leet → letters), strip spacing and
punctuation, NFKC-normalize unicode. One normalization step closes case / leetspeak / spacing classes.
Broaden the policy — add missing synonyms/expansions to the blocked set (the missing-synonym
class), keyed to the oracle's categories, not ad-hoc strings.
Tighten over-broad rules — scope a match to whole words / the right context so benign inputs stop
tripping it (the overblock class), the most common source of regressions.
Mind the interaction order (both modes): make the narrowing/over-broad fix before a sweeping one.
A fix that strips separators (closing spacing) can re-collapse a benign input into an over-broad
substring and silently reopen an overblock class — and likewise a broad code change can reopen a test
a narrower fix had to protect. Fix the narrow/over-broad case first, then generalize.
Ledger
<sandbox_root>/ledger.tsv, tab-separated, never commas in the description. regr = regression_count
this iteration (the gate: 0 is clean); status ∈ {keep,discard,baseline,residual}. Header
iter class_targeted regr open_classes status description:
iter class_targeted regr open_classes status description
0 - 0 5 baseline catalogue: 5 open classes
1 case-bypass 0 4 keep case-fold the input before matching
2 leetspeak 1 4 discard de-leet regex also over-blocked a holdout input (regression)
3 leetspeak 0 3 keep de-leet via translate table, holdout clean
4 missing-synonym 0 2 keep add passphrase/credentials/api-key to the policy set
5 overblock 0 1 keep require whole-word "secret key", not bare "secret"
6 spacing 0 0 keep strip non-alphanumerics before matching — dry
Report the best iteration (open_classes lowest with regr 0), not necessarily the last.
Constraints
Only edit <target_files>. The ground truth — the oracle + <holdout> (oracle mode) or the test
suite (tests mode) — and tools/verify.py are frozen; editing what measures the fix manufactures a
pass (same rule as red-team and optimize-loop). If the oracle or a test is itself wrong, that is a
finding to report, not something to patch here.
Fix the root cause, not the payload. One fix should close every item of a class; patching a single
example string while siblings still fail means the class is not closed. This mirrors red-team's class
accounting, so the two loops agree on what "closed" means.
The regression gate is non-negotiable. A patch that breaks something that passed before — a new
over-block/bypass (oracle mode) or a previously-passing test (tests mode) — is a regression, not
progress; revert it regardless of how many classes it closes. Prefer a narrower fix over a sweeping one.
One class per iteration, so each delta is attributable and a bad fix is cheap to revert.
Keep changes within the project's existing dependency set (stdlib is fine); stay inside the repo and
<sandbox_root>; do not pause the loop to ask whether to continue — run until dry, budget, or residuals.
Handoff: the pull request
The deliverable is a human-reviewable pull request — the communication interface to whoever owns the
target (a human keeps final approval, as with Copilot Autofix). On stop, with the working tree at the
best iteration:
In branches mode each kept fix is already a commit on <pr_branch> whose message names the class +
the one-line fix. Push and open the PR with gh pr create, body = the ledger (catalogue → fixes,
classes closed, residuals listed, regressions avoided) and one reproducible example per closed class.
Confirm once before opening the PR — pushing a branch and creating a PR is outward-facing; never
auto-push silently.
Degrade, don't fail: if there is no remote or gh is unavailable/unauthed, still produce the
handoff — leave the commits on <pr_branch>, write git format-patch output and a PR_BODY.md into
<sandbox_root>, and tell the user the single command to open the PR themselves. In snapshots mode
(no git), emit a unified diff of <target_files> against the iter0/ baseline copy, plus
PR_BODY.md, instead.
Pairing
This skill is the fixer — the back half of a find→fix loop. It assumes a catalogue already exists; by
itself it closes classes but does not search for new ones.
Find — red-team runs against the frozen target → failures.jsonl (distinct classes).
Fix(this loop) — patch the target to close those classes under the gate, between red-team
runs, never inside one.
Re-verify — a freshred-team run against the patched target confirms each class is closed
and surfaces any new class the fix introduced (the regression gate already guards the over-block
direction within this loop).
Keep the two agents independent — the attacker that wrote the catalogue should not grade its own patch.
The purple-team loop orchestrates the full find → fix → re-verify cycle until a fresh find stays dry;
this skill deliberately covers only the fix phase.
