Assess whether suspicious evidence indicates a real threat and explain it plainly. Use for confidence, protective actions, uncertainty, impact, and advice after artifact, endpoint, identity, or incident evidence.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
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---
name: assess-and-explain-threat
description: Assess whether suspicious evidence indicates a real threat and explain it plainly. Use for confidence, protective actions, uncertainty, impact, and advice after artifact, endpoint, identity, or incident evidence.
---
# Assess And Explain Threat
## Overview
Turn mixed evidence into a proportionate conclusion and advice the affected person can follow. Do not collapse signatures, reputation, scanner output, or unusual behavior into a binary safe/malicious verdict.
Read [references/confidence-and-advice.md](references/confidence-and-advice.md) for conclusion vocabulary and the explanation shape.
## Workflow
1. Restate the decision.
- Identify what the user must decide now and what can wait for more evidence.
2. Grade evidence by directness.
- Separate direct observations, reproducible behaviors, vendor or threat-intelligence claims, weak indicators, absence of findings, and speculation.
- Record contradicting evidence and coverage gaps.
3. Assess behavior and impact.
- State what access, execution, persistence, collection, credential use, network behavior, or data exposure is observed or technically plausible.
- Distinguish capability from intent and artifact presence from successful compromise.
4. Choose a calibrated classification.
- Use one classification from the reference and state confidence separately.
- Name the strongest supporting evidence and what would change the conclusion.
5. Give proportionate advice.
- Put urgent harm-reduction actions first.
- Separate containment, evidence preservation, recovery, credential actions, notification, and long-term hardening.
- Avoid destructive cleanup when evidence is weak and reversible isolation is available.
6. Give a plain-language explanation.
- Answer whether the concern is dangerous, what it appears to do, what is known versus inferred, what to do now, and when to escalate.
- Define specialist terms at first use and avoid fear-amplifying language.
## Output
Return the conclusion, confidence, decisive evidence, contradictions/gaps, immediate actions, follow-up analysis, and a short non-specialist explanation.
