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Interview question · Agent, Tool & MCP Security

How is an agent skill from a public marketplace different from an MCP server as a risk, and how would you govern skills?

A skill is instructions plus code that runs with the agent's own permissions, with no process boundary in between. The scored answer reviews it like software and like a prompt, because it is both.

hardNewPreparation tags: Anthropic, OpenAI, MicrosoftUpdated Nov 2026

A skill is instructions plus code that runs with the agent's own permissions, with no process boundary in between. The scored answer reviews it like software and like a prompt, because it is both.

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What would you say before reading the answer?

  1. 01 State the assumptions your answer depends on.
  2. 02 Explain the mechanism and choose a control.
  3. 03 Name a condition that would change your decision.

The worked answer includes an approach, scoring criteria and follow-up questions. Compare the reasoning with your own.

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What if · the follow-ups in this answer

The answer works through 4 follow-ups like an interviewer would

A developer installs a popular 'deploy helper' skill from a public marketplace into their coding agent. Two days later, the company's cloud access keys from that developer's laptop are used from an unknown network.

  1. How could a skill lead to stolen keys without any exploit?
  2. What do you do now?
  3. What stops the next one?
  4. How do you summarise agent skill risk?

Each rung has a nudge, a model answer, the principle that carries over and the weak answer to avoid. Premium opens every answer and ladder.

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