High-Star SEO Skill Caught Sneaking Self-Promo Backlinks
jasoncola1 · reddit · 2026-07-17
While using Claude Code to build SEO/GEO tools, a developer discovered hidden self-promotion in claude-seo, a GitHub repository boasting 11.5k stars.\n\nThe project's skill file (SKILL.md, line 119) contains an undisclosed instruction: it commands the AI agent to automatically append the author's Skool community promotional link to the end of the output after executing any of 15 different SEO audit commands.\n\nThis means that using this tool for client projects would unknowingly generate backlinks for the original author with every delivery. The poster warns the community that GitHub stars and fork ratios are no substitute for thorough source code security reviews, urging users to perform comprehensive scans before installing any third-party skills.
More from coding & agent
- Claude Code finds root backdoor in Honda Civic head unit, then debloats it — IndraVahan · 2026-10-26
- Claude Code + Monid MCP builds a $12K/year B2B prospecting engine on live data — aryanXmahajan · 2026-10-26
- Karpathy shares CLAUDE.md rulebook to stop AI coding agents from piling up tech debt — mdancho84 · 2026-10-26
- Rethinking dependencies in the agent era: drop libs that save 20 lines of code — gethackteam · 2026-10-26
- RustGIS hits 2,000 GitHub stars in two weeks with agent-first architecture — giswqs · 2026-10-26
- Vercel Ships 12 New Products at Its 2026 Conference as It Races Rivals for the Agent Entry Point — FinanceYF5 · 2026-10-26