Penthera

Name: Penthera
Author: danoszz

by danoszzversion 2.3.2i★ –iRuns on your computer

Registry nameio.github.danoszz/penthera

Install

Overview

Description from the maker (original English)

Offline, rule-based security checks for your repo, dependencies, AI agent config and local app.

PopNx MCP’s three pillars

These three are never merged into one score: opinions, measurements and popularity are different things.

User voiceiNo reviews yetReviews open together with accounts in a later step
Our basic checksi1 of 1 passedChecked from public information; code not scanned yet
UsageiNot measured yet★ –

What you can do with it

We have not written a plain-language summary for this one yet. Below are the facts we read from the registry.

Connection: Runs on your computer
Transport: stdio
Category: Other

Install

Pick the AI app you use, then copy the settings.

Before you install

Basic checks: 1 of 1 passed
Runs on your computer with your user’s permissions (files, network, apps).
The registry lists no key to fill in.

You need

npmNode.js installed (for the npx command)

Which app do you use?

ClaudeClaude CodeCursorVS CodeChatGPT

Pick your app above. We remember it, so next time the button says “Install in …”.

Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer → Edit Config, and paste this into claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "penthera": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "penthera",
        "mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Run this in your terminal

claude mcp add penthera -- npx -y penthera mcp

Open in Cursor

Or copy the settings yourself

Paste into .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "penthera": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "penthera",
        "mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Your browser asks to open the app, then the app shows the settings and asks you to confirm. Key values are left empty for you to fill in.

Open in VS Code

Or copy the settings yourself

Paste into .vscode/mcp.json in your project

{
  "servers": {
    "penthera": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "penthera",
        "mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Your browser asks to open the app, then the app shows the settings and asks you to confirm. Key values are left empty for you to fill in.

This one runs on your computer, and ChatGPT can only connect to servers on the internet. Pick another app.

Your choice stays on this device in a cookie; no account needed.

These settings are generated from the maker’s registry entry. If the README says otherwise, follow the README.

What it can do

Runs on your computer; the tool list appears in your AI app after you install it.

Basic checksi

We check information anyone can see; we have not read the code. Checks that do not apply are left out of the count. · Checked Nov 7, 2026

✓ Pass
Maker matches the repo
The registry name was verified with the GitHub account danoszz, which owns the repo
… Not checked yet
Still maintained
We have not read this repo from GitHub yet
… Not checked yet
Has a licence
We have not read this repo from GitHub yet
– Not applicable
Endpoint responds
This one runs on your computer; there is no internet endpoint
– Not applicable
Sign-in with OAuth
Runs on your computer and uses local settings instead
… Not checked yet
No hidden instructions in tool descriptions
Runs on your computer; we can only read tool lists from internet endpoints

Compared with others in Otheri

More stars than 0% of the other 32568 servers in this category
Published to the registry more recently than 100% of the other 32568 servers in this category
Basic checks equal to or better than 100% of the other 32568 servers in this category

Compared with every active server in this category in the registry. Stars count only when the publisher owns the repo.

Common questions

Is Penthera safe?

It passed 1 of 1 applicable basic checks. We have not read the code. Before adding a key or token, see what access the server asks for and use a key with only the permissions you need.

What keys or codes does it need?

The registry does not list a required key, though some servers ask you to sign in on first use.

Does it run on my computer or in the cloud?

It runs on your computer. Your AI app starts it when needed, and data does not pass through the maker’s servers (unless it calls an online service itself).

Is it still maintained?

The GitHub repo last changed –, and the latest version (2.3.2) reached the registry today.

Which apps can use it?

Apps that support MCP, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code. You also need Node.js on your computer.

What can I use instead?

In the same category: Spec Driven Development, Remote Desktop Commander, FlyDocs

Alternatives

Servers in the same category from other makers, sorted by stars.

Reading a card:★ GitHub starsiThree pillars: reviews · checks · usageiUpdated = latest version published to the registryi

Spec Driven Development

by formulahendry

MCP Server that facilitates spec-driven development workflows, not just Vibe Coding.

Runs on your computer★ 440MITUpdated 14 months ago

Install

Remote Desktop Commander

by desktop-commander

Remote Desktop Commander: use files, terminal and processes on your own computers from any AI app.

Runs in the cloud★ 211Updated yesterday

Install

FlyDocs

by flydocs.ai

Spec-driven development workflow: your agent works issues, sessions and the status lifecycle.

Runs on your computerUpdated today

Install

README from the maker

Open the README

Copied from the maker’s repo as written. PopNx MCP has not reviewed or endorsed it. HTML, images and scripts are removed. Links lead off this site.

Penthera: your open-source cyber security agent

The security review you never had time for. Offline, rule-based, and you can verify every finding yourself.

[penthera.org](https://penthera.org): check your live site in a few seconds. Passive, nothing stored.

Daily notes from Penthera: [x.com/penthera_org](https://x.com/penthera_org)

Who builds it: Daan van der Zwaag, part-time and in the open.

How it compares: next to Snyk, Socket, Semgrep, ZAP and GitHub.

132 readable rules · 6 read-only MCP tools · 0 runtime dependencies · 0 requests past loopback in the benchmark · MIT, no telemetry

`penthera ui`, Simple, dark	`penthera ui`, Advanced, light

What it is

Penthera checks your app, its dependencies and your AI coding tools on your own machine. It fixes what it can, with your approval. Every finding comes from a rule you can read, with its evidence at file:line. A model may propose; a rule decides.

It is also an open R&D project. We measure every check in public and publish the results, good or bad, so you can see how far to trust it.

It finds known classes of problems, not novel ones. It does not replace a human pentester.

Start in 30 seconds

You need Node.js 22 or later. No install, no account.

Building with Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, Zed, JetBrains or Kiro, or an app builder such as Lovable, Bolt, Base44, Replit or v0? Penthera in your coding tool has the setup for each.

In your terminal. Run this in your project folder:

npx penthera

It detects your setup offline, asks what to check, and gives you a grade per area and the three things to fix first. It scans your running app only after you confirm the app is yours. Nothing is committed or pushed (guided start).

In your coding agent. Pick yours, then ask "scan my app for security issues". The MCP lines pin the version.

Agent	Run this
Claude Code, plugin (skill only, runs the CLI)	`claude plugin marketplace add danoszz/penthera`, then `claude plugin install penthera@penthera`
Claude Code, MCP server only	`claude mcp add penthera -- npx -y penthera@2.3.2 mcp`
Codex	`codex mcp add penthera -- npx -y penthera@2.3.2 mcp`
GitHub Copilot CLI	`copilot plugin marketplace add danoszz/penthera`, then `copilot plugin install penthera@penthera`
GitHub Copilot in VS Code	the `code --add-mcp` line in mcp.md
Gemini CLI	`gemini extensions install https://github.com/danoszz/penthera`
Cursor, Windsurf	the JSON in mcp.md
Any agent that reads skills	`npx skills add danoszz/penthera`

The skill tells your agent how to run Penthera; the MCP server gives it six read-only tools. More routes: skill.md, mcp.md.

To run it in a container: docker build -t penthera . && docker run --rm penthera https://your-app.example.

Public benchmarks

We test Penthera on public datasets that other people built, next to the free open-source tools that do the same job, scored the same way. Each dataset was split in half before we looked: we improved Penthera on one half and scored it once on the other, sealed half. The rules for scoring and ranking were written down before that run (protocol).

Benchmark	Score	Penthera 1.9.0	Penthera 2.0.0	Rank among free tools	Best other free tool
Leaked secrets (Samsung CredData)	F1	0.18	0.74	2nd of 10	deepsecrets 0.78
Malicious npm packages (DataDog)	caught minus false alarms	0.57	0.71	1st of 6, tied 1st to 3rd ⁴	malcontent 0.63
Malicious PyPI packages (DataDog)	caught minus false alarms	0.74	0.82	1st of 8, tied 1st to 3rd ⁴	GuardDog 0.74
Injection bugs in JS libraries (SecBench.js)	found in the right file	0.16	0.70	1st of 8, tied 1st to 4th ⁴	odgen 0.68

⁴ A tied range is a rank interval: the range Penthera's rank fell in, in 95% of 10,000 bootstrap redraws of each tool's counts (on SecBench.js, of its 64 test bugs). Penthera alone came out first in 76% of the redraws on npm, 82% on PyPI and 60% on SecBench.js. Exploratory: computed after the registered ranking.

Leaked secrets: 2nd by F1, the registered score; 1st by F0.5, which weighs precision more (0.82 against deepsecrets 0.80); 2nd by F2, which weighs recall more (0.68 against deepsecrets 0.77).

Some ranked tools are barely in the contest. Other ranked tools scoring below 0.10: 1 of 9 on CredData (trufflehog); 3 of 5 on npm (clamav, yara, ossgadget); 4 of 7 on PyPI (clamav, ossgadget, bandit4mal, aura); 1 of 7 on SecBench.js (njsscan).

If 1 package in 1,000 were malicious, the share of Penthera's malware flags that would be right: npm, about 2.7% at the top of the false-alarm interval (it raised no false alarm on that sample); PyPI, about 1.6% at the measured false-alarm rate, 0.9% at the top of its interval. Exploratory, like the rank intervals.

Every tool, every number (95% intervals)

Leaked secrets (Samsung CredData)

Rank	Tool	Precision	Recall	F1
1	deepsecrets 2.2.0	0.80 [0.79, 0.82]	0.77 [0.75, 0.78]	0.78
2	Penthera 2.0.0	0.89 [0.87, 0.90]	0.64 [0.62, 0.66]	0.74
3	noseyparker 0.24.0	0.76 [0.74, 0.78]	0.62 [0.60, 0.64]	0.69
4	gitleaks 8.30.1	0.85 [0.84, 0.86]	0.37 [0.35, 0.39]	0.52
5	ripsecrets 0.1.11	0.65 [0.64, 0.67]	0.35 [0.33, 0.37]	0.45
6	kingfisher 2.14.0	0.96 [0.94, 0.97]	0.29 [0.28, 0.31]	0.45
7	detect-secrets 1.5.0	0.30 [0.29, 0.31]	0.53 [0.51, 0.56]	0.38
8	secretlint 13.0.7	0.92 [0.89, 0.94]	0.19 [0.18, 0.21]	0.32
9	whispers 2.4.0	0.46 [0.43, 0.50]	0.09 [0.08, 0.10]	0.15
10	trufflehog 3.99.3	0.40 [0.35, 0.45]	0.05 [0.05, 0.07]	0.10
–	credsweeper 1.19.4 ¹	1.00 [1.00, 1.00]	0.98 [0.98, 0.99]	0.99
–	Penthera 1.9.0	0.56 [0.51, 0.60]	0.10 [0.09, 0.12]	0.18
	Free tools, mean / median	0.68 / 0.76	0.36 / 0.35	0.43 / 0.45

Malicious npm packages (DataDog)

Rank	Tool	Caught	False alarms on benign packages	Caught minus false alarms
1	Penthera 2.0.0	0.71 [0.62, 0.78] (79/112)	0.00 [0.00, 0.02] (0/150)	0.71
2	malcontent 1.27.1 (bf280ad6), yara-x 1.21.0	0.68 [0.59, 0.76] (76/112)	0.05 [0.03, 0.10] (8/150)	0.63
3	GuardDog 3.2.0 ²	0.62 [0.52, 0.70] (69/112)	0.03 [0.01, 0.07] (4/150)	0.59
4	ossgadget 0.2.20 (414b6a59)	0.94 [0.88, 0.97] (105/112)	0.89 [0.83, 0.93] (133/150)	0.05
5	clamav 1.5.4	0.01 [0.00, 0.05] (1/112)	0.00 [0.00, 0.02] (0/150)	0.01
6	yara yara-python 4.5.4 (YARA 4.5), YARA-Forge core 20261004	0.00 [0.00, 0.03] (0/112)	0.00 [0.00, 0.02] (0/150)	0.00
–	osv-scanner 2.6.0 ³	0.90 [0.83, 0.94] (101/112)	0.01 [0.00, 0.04] (1/150)	0.90
–	Penthera 1.9.0	0.57 [0.48, 0.66] (64/112)	0.00 [0.00, 0.02] (0/150)	0.57

Malicious PyPI packages (DataDog)

Rank	Tool	Caught	False alarms on benign packages	Caught minus false alarms
1	Penthera 2.0.0	0.87 [0.81, 0.92] (131/150)	0.05 [0.03, 0.10] (8/150)	0.82
2	GuardDog 3.2.0 ²	0.85 [0.79, 0.90] (128/150)	0.11 [0.07, 0.17] (16/147)	0.74
3	malcontent 1.27.1 (bf280ad6), yara-x 1.21.0	0.93 [0.87, 0.96] (139/150)	0.22 [0.16, 0.29] (32/147)	0.71
4	yara yara-python 4.5.4 (YARA 4.5), YARA-Forge core 20261004	0.25 [0.18, 0.32] (37/150)	0.00 [0.00, 0.03] (0/147)	0.25
5	clamav 1.5.4	0.00 [0.00, 0.02] (0/150)	0.00 [0.00, 0.03] (0/147)	0.00
6	ossgadget 0.2.20 (414b6a59)	0.77 [0.70, 0.83] (116/150)	0.97 [0.93, 0.99] (143/147)	-0.20
7	aura 2.1 (SourceCode-AI/aura b40e6dd2)	0.59 [0.51, 0.67] (88/149)	0.83 [0.75, 0.88] (100/121)	-0.24
8	bandit4mal lyvd/bandit4mal 03ba95f3 (bandit 1.6.3 fork)	0.59 [0.51, 0.67] (89/150)	0.84 [0.78, 0.89] (124/147)	-0.25
–	Penthera 1.9.0	0.83 [0.77, 0.88] (125/150)	0.09 [0.06, 0.15] (14/150)	0.74
–	osv-scanner 2.6.0 ³	0.74 [0.66, 0.80] (110/149)	0.00 [0.00, 0.03] (0/147)	0.74

Injection bugs in JavaScript libraries (SecBench.js)

Rank	Tool	Command injection	Code injection	Both
1	Penthera 2.0.0	35/47	10/17	0.70 [0.58, 0.80]
2	odgen c5157ee	36/46	6/16	0.68 [0.55, 0.78]
3	codeql 2.27.2 (used under the GitHub CodeQL terms, for research on open-source code)	37/47	4/17	0.64 [0.52, 0.75]
4	eslint-plugin-security 4.2.0	32/47	9/17	0.64 [0.52, 0.75]
5	semgrep 1.180.0	15/47	9/17	0.38 [0.27, 0.50]
6	graudit 849d7c7	12/47	10/17	0.34 [0.24, 0.47]
7	bearer 2.1.1	14/47	0/17	0.22 [0.14, 0.33]
8	njsscan 1.0.1	2/45	1/15	0.05 [0.02, 0.14]
–	semgrep, every file 1.180.0 (another setting of semgrep, not ranked)	16/47	9/17	0.39 [0.28, 0.51]
–	Penthera 1.9.0	0/47	10/17	0.16 [0.09, 0.26]

A rank is shown only where at least 5 other free tools were measured; otherwise "–". The rank column orders tools by score, and close scores can swap places. Penthera's 95% rank interval (bootstrap, exploratory): 2nd on CredData, 1st to 3rd on npm, 1st to 3rd on PyPI, 1st to 4th on SecBench.js.

Paid tools (GitGuardian, Socket, Snyk, Phylum, Semgrep Pro) publish no results on these benchmarks, so they are not in the tables.

Published elsewhere, on other datasets (context, not comparable):

A comparative study of software secrets reporting by secret detection tools (2023): nine tools on SecretBench, ggshield included
[How effective are npm malicious package detec

Only the beginning is shown; read the rest in the repo

Penthera

Overview

PopNx MCP’s three pillars

What you can do with it

Install

Before you install

What it can do

Basic checksi

Maker matches the repo

Still maintained

Has a licence

Endpoint responds

Sign-in with OAuth

No hidden instructions in tool descriptions

Compared with others in Otheri

Common questions

Alternatives

Spec Driven Development

Remote Desktop Commander

FlyDocs

README from the maker

Penthera: your open-source cyber security agent

What it is

Start in 30 seconds

Public benchmarks

Leaked secrets (Samsung CredData)

Malicious npm packages (DataDog)

Malicious PyPI packages (DataDog)

Injection bugs in JavaScript libraries (SecBench.js)