Openclaw Bastion

---
name: openclaw-bastion
description: "Prompt injection defense for agent workspaces. Scan files for injection attempts, analyze content boundaries, detect hidden instructions, and maintain command allowlists. Free alert layer — upgrade to openclaw-bastion-pro for active blocking, sanitization, and runtime enforcement."
user-invocable: true
metadata: {"openclaw":{"emoji":"\ud83c\udfdb\ufe0f","requires":{"bins":["python3"]},"os":["darwin","linux","win32"]}}
---

# OpenClaw Bastion

Runtime prompt injection defense for agent workspaces. While other tools watch workspace identity files, Bastion protects the input/output boundary — the files being read by the agent, web content, API responses, and user-supplied documents.

## Why This Matters

Agents process content from many sources: local files, API responses, web pages, user uploads. Any of these can contain prompt injection attacks — hidden instructions that manipulate agent behavior. Bastion scans this content before the agent acts on it.

**Need active blocking?** Upgrade to [openclaw-bastion-pro](https://github.com/AtlasPA/openclaw-bastion-pro) for runtime content sanitization, auto-quarantine, canary testing, and policy enforcement via hooks.

## Commands

### Scan for Injections

Scan files or directories for prompt injection patterns. Detects instruction overrides, system prompt markers, hidden Unicode, markdown exfiltration, HTML injection, shell injection, encoded payloads, delimiter confusion, multi-turn manipulation, and dangerous commands.

If no target is specified, scans the entire workspace.

```bash
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py scan
```

Scan a specific file or directory:

```bash
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py scan path/to/file.md
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py scan path/to/directory/
```

### Quick File Check

Fast single-file injection check. Same detection patterns as `scan`, targeted to one file.

```bash
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py check path/to/file.md
```

### Boundary Analysis

Analyze content boundary safety across the workspace. Identifies:
- Agent instruction files that contain mixed trusted/untrusted content
- Writable instruction files (attack surface for compromised skills)
- Blast radius assessment for each critical file

```bash
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py boundaries
```

### Command Allowlist

Display the current command allowlist and blocklist policy. Creates a default `.bastion-policy.json` if none exists.

```bash
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py allowlist
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py allowlist --show
```

The policy file defines which commands are considered safe and which patterns are blocked. Edit the JSON file directly to customize. Bastion Pro enforces this policy at runtime via hooks.

### Status

Quick summary of workspace injection defense posture: files scanned, findings by severity, boundary safety, and overall posture rating.

```bash
python3 {baseDir}/scripts/bastion.py status
```

## Workspace Auto-Detection

If `--workspace` is omitted, the script tries:
1. `OPENCLAW_WORKSPACE` environment variable
2. Current directory (if `AGENTS.md` exists)
3. `~/.openclaw/workspace` (default)

## What Gets Detected

| Category | Patterns | Severity |
|----------|----------|----------|
| **Instruction override** | "ignore previous", "disregard above", "you are now", "new system prompt", "forget your instructions", "override safety", "act as if no restrictions", "entering developer mode" | CRITICAL |
| **System prompt markers** | `<system>`, `[SYSTEM]`, `<<SYS>>`, `<\|im_start\|>system`, `[INST]`, `### System:` | CRITICAL |
| **Hidden instructions** | Multi-turn manipulation ("in your next response, you must"), stealth patterns ("do not tell the user") | CRITICAL |
| **HTML injection** | `<script>`, `<iframe>`, `<img onerror=>`, hidden divs, `<svg onload=>` | CRITICAL |
| **Markdown exfiltration** | Image tags with encoded data in URLs | CRITICAL |
| **Dangerous commands** | `curl \| bash`, `wget \| sh`, `rm -rf /`, fork bombs | CRITICAL |
| **Unicode tricks** | Zero-width characters, RTL overrides, invisible formatting | WARNING |
| **Homoglyph substitution** | Cyrillic/Latin lookalikes mixed into ASCII text | WARNING |
| **Base64 payloads** | Large encoded blobs outside code blocks | WARNING |
| **Shell injection** | `$(command)` subshell execution outside code blocks | WARNING |
| **Delimiter confusion** | Fake code block boundaries with injection content | WARNING |

## Context-Aware Scanning

- Patterns inside fenced code blocks (` ``` `) are skipped to avoid false positives
- Per-file risk scoring based on finding count and severity
- Self-exclusion: Bastion skips its own skill files (which describe injection patterns)

## Exit Codes

| Code | Meaning |
|------|---------|
| 0 | Clean, no issues |
| 1 | Warnings detected (review recommended) |
| 2 | Critical findings (action needed) |

## No External Dependencies

Python standard library only. No pip install. No network calls. Everything runs locally.

## Cross-Platform

Works with OpenClaw, Claude Code, Cursor, and any tool using the Agent Skills specification.