Shannon

Visit Website

Introduction

Shannon is an autonomous AI pentester for web applications and their APIs, developed by Keygraph. It combines source-code analysis with live exploitation: it reads your code to find likely attack paths, then uses browser automation and command-line tools to execute real exploits against the running application. Its rule is “No exploit, no report”: only vulnerabilities with a working proof of concept appear in the final report.

The motivation in the README is the gap between how often teams ship and how often they are pentested. With coding agents producing code non-stop, an annual pentest leaves the other 364 days untested. Shannon is meant to run against every build or release, shifting exploitation-backed testing left into the development lifecycle and covering the long tail of internal apps and fast-moving services that rarely get expert attention.

The maintainers are clear that it complements expert pentesters rather than replacing them. People who understand the business and chain attacks creatively remain essential for critical systems; Shannon addresses the volume problem.

Running it is a two-step npx flow: an interactive setup wizard for credentials, then a start command with the app URL and the path to its repository. Shannon pulls a worker image from Docker Hub, starts local infrastructure, mounts the repository read-only in an ephemeral container and writes results to a local workspace. The README also documents authenticated scans, source builds and using a subscription instead of API credits, and includes an experimental probe for the php2shell RCE chain.

The README carries a strong warning that Shannon actively executes exploits: run it only against applications and environments you own or are authorised in writing to test, and not against production systems. The same agent powers Keygraph’s commercial Pro and Enterprise editions.

The source code is at KeygraphHQ/shannon on GitHub under the AGPL-3.0 licence, with about 51,700 stars; the most recent commit was on 10 November 2026.

When comparing Shannon with traditional scanners, look at three things: how many reported issues your developers agree are real, how many come with a reproducible exploit, and how long a scan takes on your application. Proof-only reporting should make the first two numbers high; the third decides how often you can afford to run it.

Keep its output in your normal security workflow. Each finding should become a ticket with an owner and a fix deadline, and a retest after the fix, otherwise automated pentesting simply produces a longer backlog.

Run it after significant releases and on new internal applications first, where a quick exploit-backed check adds the most value.

Because each run exercises real exploits, schedule scans when staging is quiet, notify the owning team in advance, and reset seeded data afterwards so later tests start from a known state. These small habits keep automated pentesting from disrupting other testing in shared environments.

Features

1. White-box analysis: Reads source code to find attack paths.
2. Live exploitation: Browser automation and CLI tools against the running app.
3. Proof-only reports: Findings require a working PoC.
4. Interactive setup: setup wizard for credentials.
5. Ephemeral workers: Repository mounted read-only in a container.
6. Authenticated scans: Documented support for logged-in testing.
7. Agent-friendly docs: llms.txt and llms-full.txt for coding agents.
8. Experimental probes: For example php2shell upgrade verification.

Pros

1. High signal: No unproven findings in reports.
2. Very popular: Tens of thousands of GitHub stars.
3. Runs locally: Your code stays on your infrastructure.
4. Free to use: Open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence, so the core tool costs nothing to use.
5. Actively maintained: The repository had commits as recent as 10 November 2026.
6. Community: About 51,700 GitHub stars.

Cons

1. AGPL-3.0: Licence obligations for some organisations.
2. Needs source access: Designed around white-box testing.
3. Not for production: Maintainers advise staging only.
4. Docker and model costs: Infrastructure and LLM usage required.

Usage and Links (Example)

npx @keygraph/shannon@latest setup
npx @keygraph/shannon@latest start \
  -u https://staging.your-app.com \
  -r /path/to/your/repo

Tips:

1. Use a staging environment with seeded test accounts.
2. Run it on release candidates, and give the report to the owning team with the PoC attached.
3. Keep annual expert pentests for critical systems.

Resources:

• Shannon website

Pricing

Shannon is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence.

Recommended for?

1. Teams shipping web apps and APIs weekly that pentest only yearly.
2. AppSec teams covering many internal apps.

Conclusion

Shannon brings exploitation-backed pentesting into the release cycle, and its proof-only reporting keeps noise low.

Respect its warnings: authorised, non-production targets only.

On CheckOps, Shannon is filed under the Security testing and Release & CI gates stages. Related tools listed here include Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP, Nuclei, StackHawk, Semgrep and CodeQL. A short trial on a real project, with your own code, data and pipeline, is usually the fastest way to choose between them, because fit matters more than feature lists. Facts here come from the official site, documentation and repository, checked on 11 November 2026.