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DSB DevSecOps Engineering Skill

Turn a description of your stack into a delivery pipeline with the right security controls in the right places — and no scanners you did not need.

By The DevSec Blueprint · MIT · v0.1.0 (pre-1.0)

Build what you need. Test what you built. Scan what can introduce meaningful risk. Deploy only what passed.


Contents


What is this?

A skill for AI coding agents that encodes how The DevSec Blueprint teaches DevSecOps engineering. Give it your stack — or point it at a pipeline you already have — and it reasons from a fixed rule catalog to a Control Plan: which security controls apply to this workload, which are already covered by tools you own, where each one belongs in the pipeline, and whether it should block delivery or just report.

It is not a pipeline generator with a scanner list bolted on. It decides what applies before it writes anything.

DSB defines the required capabilities and engineering outcomes. Your organization determines how those capabilities are implemented.


Why use it

It reuses what you already own. Tell it you have Checkmarx and Black Duck and it resolves SAST and SCA to satisfied, by name, and moves on. It does not propose Snyk alongside Black Duck. Zero new scanners is a correct answer, and the most common one in an enterprise.

It says what does not apply, and why. A Terraform-only repository gets container scanning marked Not Applicable with the stated fact that produced it — not silently dropped, and not recommended "to be safe". Twelve explicit N/A determinations are the deliverable, not filler.

It asks instead of assuming. Partial context produces a partial plan plus the specific unresolved fields, phrased as questions. It does not infer that you build containers because you mentioned Java.

It explains the engineering. Every recommendation carries a rule ID, the reason that placement is the earliest technically valid one, and whether the enforcement level came from DSB or from your own policy.

It refuses the dangerous default. Active DAST against production requires explicit authorization. Unknown is treated as no.


Install in 60 seconds

As a skill — one file, no dependencies, works in any agent that loads Markdown instructions:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/dsb-devsecops
curl -o ~/.claude/skills/dsb-devsecops/SKILL.md \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devsecblueprint/devsecops-claude-skill/main/SKILL.md

Restart your agent. It loads on its own when the topic matches — you never name it.

As a Claude Code plugin, if you also want the /devsecops-engineer:* commands:

/plugin install devsecblueprint/devsecops-claude-skill

Any other agent: drop SKILL.md wherever your tool loads instructions from, or paste it into the system prompt. Plain Markdown with YAML frontmatter, no external references.


Try it

Three prompts, one per operating mode. Slash commands are shown where the plugin is installed; the plain-language version does the same thing with the skill alone.

Advise — where do controls belong, given what we already own?

/devsecops-engineer:advise We use Jenkins, Java, Maven, Artifactory, Checkmarx,
Black Duck, Prisma Cloud, and OpenShift. How should our pipeline be designed?

You should get Checkmarx → SAST, Black Duck → SCA, Prisma → container scanning, all resolved as reuse; SBOM generation flagged as a real gap; and questions about the things it genuinely cannot know. Compare with examples/generate-jenkins/.

Design — give me the pipeline.

/devsecops-engineer:design A Node.js service that builds a container and deploys to
AWS ECS. Terraform for infrastructure, staging and production.

Container scan before push, deploy by digest, OIDC instead of static keys, actions pinned to SHAs, DAST against staging only. Compare with examples/generate-github-actions/delivery.yml.

Assess — what is wrong with the pipeline we have?

/devsecops-engineer:assess .github/workflows/deploy.yml

Findings ordered by what an attacker reaches first. Compare with examples/review-non-compliant/.


Common workflows

You want to… Do this
Decide which scanners a new service actually needs Advise with your stack and existing tools
Justify not buying another scanner Advise — the reuse resolution names the tool that already covers it
Stand up a pipeline for a new repository Design, after answering the platform/language/target questions
Audit a pipeline you inherited Assess, pointed at the workflow file
Prepare for an SSDF or SLSA conversation Assess, then docs/framework-mappings.md
Explain a control to a team that pushed back Ask why a rule exists — every rule carries its engineering reason

How it works

All three modes run the same procedure and produce the same intermediate artifact, so Advise, Design, and Assess cannot disagree about what applies to a workload.

Your description, a pipeline file, a repository, or any mix
        ↓
1. WORKLOAD PROFILE      only stated facts; everything else is `unknown`
        ↓
2. APPLICABILITY         each rule → APPLIES | NOT APPLICABLE (+reason) | UNKNOWN (+question)
        ↓
3. CAPABILITY RESOLUTION reuse existing | delegated elsewhere | gap | duplicate
        ↓
4. ENFORCEMENT + PLACEMENT   block/warn/report, at the earliest valid phase
        ↓
   ══ CONTROL PLAN ══
        ↓
 Advise (explain)    Design (render)    Assess (diff against what exists)

Everything you did not state is unknown, which is what lets it work without repository access — and what turns the unresolved fields into its questions instead of its assumptions.

The four phases:

BUILD → TEST → SCAN → DEPLOY

Logical engineering phases, not a mandated job structure. One GitHub Actions job can satisfy all four; twelve Jenkins stages can satisfy the same four. Runtime-dependent controls such as DAST run after deployment to a non-production environment — that is a placement decision inside Scan, not a fifth phase.

The rule catalog

42 rules across 11 families, each mapped to NIST SSDF, SLSA, OWASP CI/CD Security, OWASP SAMM, and CNCF supply chain guidance, and to the DSB curriculum modules that teach the concept.

Family Covers
DSB-BUILD Build and artifact creation
DSB-TEST Testing requirements
DSB-SCAN Security scanning and validation
DSB-IAC Infrastructure-as-code security
DSB-SRC Source control security
DSB-SC Software supply chain
DSB-ART Artifacts, provenance, signing, registries
DSB-DEPLOY Deployment and promotion
DSB-ID Workload identity, authentication, authorization
DSB-EVD Evidence, logging, observability
DSB-EXC Exceptions and risk acceptance

Rules require capabilities, never vendors. Every product name in this repository is illustrative; presenting one as a DSB requirement is a defect. Your internal or proprietary tools satisfy rules with no rule changes — declare them against the capability they provide.

Rule IDs are permanent. A retired rule keeps its number forever, because IDs end up in audit records.


Documentation

Start here

Document What it covers
SKILL.md The skill itself — methodology, twenty baseline principles, all 42 rules, and the three operating modes
examples/ Worked scenarios across four stacks, including two complete reference pipelines
CHANGELOG.md What shipped in each release, and what pre-1.0 means for stability

In docs/

Document What it covers
docs/framework-mappings.md Framework-first index: an SSDF practice, SLSA level, or OWASP CI/CD risk → the DSB rules that carry it. Generated from SKILL.md, never hand-edited
docs/CONTRIBUTING.md How to add or change a rule, the vendor-neutrality constraint, the commands-stay-thin policy, and how to refresh the curriculum snapshot
docs/TESTING.md The two testing layers — automated consistency checks, and the behavioral tests that prove a change actually moved agent behavior
docs/MAINTAINERS.md Ownership, maintainer responsibilities, and the review and release rules
docs/SECURITY.md How to report a vulnerability, and what counts as one in a repository that ships guidance rather than a running service
docs/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Community standards, including where vendor advocacy stops being a technical discussion

Legal, in docs/legal/

Document What it covers
LICENSE.md MIT. Commercial use permitted, no separate authorization
docs/legal/TRADEMARKS.md DSB names, logos, and curriculum sit outside the MIT license — what you may and may not call your fork
docs/legal/CLA.md Contributor License Agreement covering the rights you grant when you submit a change

Repository contents

Path Purpose
SKILL.md The skill. Self-contained — this is all a user needs
commands/ /devsecops-engineer:* entry points — thin wrappers over SKILL.md
examples/ Worked scenarios and reference pipelines across four stacks
rules/ Machine-readable projection of the catalog — see rules/README.md
references/ Capability registry and DSB curriculum snapshot
schema/ JSON Schemas for the rule and workload-profile structures
tools/ Consistency checks and the mapping-index generator, both run in CI
docs/ Contributing, testing, project policy, and framework mappings

Development

uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -r tools/requirements.txt

python tools/validate_skill.py     # consistency checks
python -m pytest                   # test suite

Install your working copy and iterate:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/dsb-devsecops
cp SKILL.md ~/.claude/skills/dsb-devsecops/
ls ~/.claude/skills/dsb-devsecops/   # SKILL.md and nothing else

A SKILL.md change that reads well but does not change agent behavior has not landed. docs/TESTING.md covers how to verify that; read docs/CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.


Status

v0.1.0 — pre-1.0. All three modes are implemented, with worked examples for each and complete rule-annotated reference pipelines for GitHub Actions and Jenkins.

The catalog and output structure will evolve based on real usage before 1.0. Rule IDs are already stable. See CHANGELOG.md.

Feedback from real pipelines is the most useful thing you can contribute right now — open an issue or bring it to the Discord.

Related: devsecblueprint#180.


License and ownership

MIT — see LICENSE.md. Commercial use is permitted, no separate authorization required.

The license covers the software in this repository. It grants no rights to DSB curriculum, walkthroughs, training materials, names, logos, or other branded assets — see Trademarks.

Owned and maintained by The DevSec Blueprint. This skill implements DSB knowledge; it is not the source of that knowledge. Where the skill and the curriculum disagree, the curriculum wins and the skill is a defect.

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