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Agent Scan (mcp-scan)

Agent Scan, formerly mcp-scan and now from Snyk, is an Apache-2.0 tool that discovers agent harnesses, MCP servers and skills on your machine and scans them for prompt injections, sensitive data handling and hidden malware.

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Introduction

Agent Scan helps you discover the agent components installed on a machine, including harnesses, MCP servers and skills, and scan them for common threats such as prompt injections, sensitive data handling and malware payloads hidden in natural language. It began as mcp-scan from Invariant Labs and is now distributed as snyk-agent-scan; enterprise deployments integrate with Snyk’s Evo platform.

Agent Scan 0.4 added scanning of agent skills, published alongside a technical report on threats in the skill ecosystem; --no-skills skips skill analysis. There is no npm package; you run it with uvx or a standalone binary.

Two important cautions from the README: scanning MCP configurations can execute commands or make outbound requests, because Agent Scan starts stdio servers and connects to remote URLs to retrieve tool descriptions, so scan untrusted configs inside a sandbox and review the consent prompt; and CLI output fields are experimental and may change, so do not build production workflows on specific issue codes.

The source code is at snyk/agent-scan on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 licence, with about 3,200 stars; the most recent commit was on 9 November 2026.

Features

  1. Component discovery: Harnesses, MCP servers and skills.
  2. Prompt injection detection: Tool descriptions and skills.
  3. Malware in natural language: Hidden payloads.
  4. Skill scanning: Since 0.4.
  5. uvx or binary: No install needed.

Pros

  1. Snyk backing: Enterprise support available.
  2. Free to use: Open source under the Apache-2.0 licence, so the core tool costs nothing to use.
  3. Actively maintained: The repository had commits as recent as 9 November 2026.
  4. Community: About 3,200 GitHub stars.

Cons

  1. Executes configs: Run in a sandbox for untrusted servers.
  2. Unstable output: CLI fields may change.
uvx snyk-agent-scan@latest                     # discover and scan local agents
uvx snyk-agent-scan@latest ~/.vscode/mcp.json  # scan one config
uvx snyk-agent-scan@latest ~/.claude/skills    # scan skills

Resources:

Pricing

Agent Scan (mcp-scan) is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 licence.

  1. Developers installing third-party MCP servers and skills.
  2. Security teams auditing agent setups.

Conclusion

Agent Scan is a quick, valuable check on the agent supply chain.

Run it in a sandbox when configs are untrusted.

On CheckOps, Agent Scan (mcp-scan) is filed under the Security testing and Release & CI gates stages. Related tools listed here include Promptfoo, garak, Socket, Semgrep, Snyk and Lakera. Which one fits best depends mostly on your stack, your team’s size and skills, and whether you prefer to run tools yourself or pay for a managed service. This page reflects the official website, documentation and repository as they stood on 11 November 2026.

Alternatives

Other tools on CheckOps that cover similar ground. Open a page, or compare one with Agent Scan (mcp-scan) side by side.