ipsw-skill

An AI agent skill for Apple firmware and binary reverse engineering using the ipsw CLI tool.

Supports Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and Pi (pi-coding-agent).

What This Skill Provides

This skill empowers AI agents to assist with:

• Downloading/extracting firmware - IPSWs, OTAs, kernelcaches, dyld_shared_cache
• Userspace reverse engineering - DSC disassembly, symbol lookup, xrefs, string search
• Dumping Objective-C headers from private frameworks
• Kernel & KEXT analysis - extraction, syscalls, diffing between versions
• Entitlements research - database queries, capability discovery
• Mach-O binary analysis - signatures, entitlements, disassembly

Installation

Prerequisites

Install the ipsw CLI tool:

brew install blacktop/tap/ipsw

skills.sh

npx skills add https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill --skill ipsw

Claude Code

Install from marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add blacktop/ipsw-skill
claude plugin install ipsw

Or install manually:

git clone https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill /tmp/ipsw-skill

# User-wide (available in all projects)
mv /tmp/ipsw-skill/ipsw ~/.claude/skills/ipsw

# Project-specific (check into your repo)
mv /tmp/ipsw-skill/ipsw .claude/skills/ipsw

Codex CLI

Use the built-in installer:

$skill-installer https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill --path ipsw

Or install manually:

git clone https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill /tmp/ipsw-skill

# User-wide
mv /tmp/ipsw-skill/ipsw ~/.codex/skills/ipsw

# Project-specific
mv /tmp/ipsw-skill/ipsw .codex/skills/ipsw

Note: Run Codex with --enable skills if skills aren’t loading automatically.

Gemini CLI

Install the extension directly:

gemini extensions install https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill

Antigravity

Install the skill manually:

# User-wide
mv /tmp/ipsw-skill/ipsw ~/.gemini/antigravity/skills/ipsw

# workspace-specific
mv /tmp/ipsw-skill/ipsw /.agent/skills/ipsw

Pi (pi-coding-agent)

# Global (adds package to ~/.pi/agent/settings.json; clones to ~/.pi/agent/git/...)
pi install https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill

# Project-local (adds package to ./.pi/settings.json; clones to ./.pi/git/...)
pi install -l https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw-skill

Usage Examples

Once installed, the agent will automatically use this skill for Apple RE tasks:

“Download the latest IPSW for iPhone 15 Pro and extract the kernel”

“Disassemble the _malloc function from the system dyld_shared_cache”

“Dump the Objective-C headers for SpringBoardServices”

“Find all binaries with the platform-application entitlement in iOS 18”

“What address is -[NSObject init] at in the DSC?”

“Find all xrefs to this function address”

Contents

ipsw-skill/
├── ipsw/                       # The skill (Claude Code / Codex / Gemini all read this)
│   ├── SKILL.md                # Main skill instructions
│   └── references/
│       ├── dyld.md             # DSC analysis (a2s, xref, dump, str)
│       ├── download.md         # Firmware download & extraction
│       ├── kernel.md           # Kernel & KEXT analysis
│       ├── macho.md            # Mach-O binary analysis
│       ├── class-dump.md       # ObjC header dumping
│       └── entitlements.md     # Entitlements database & queries
├── gemini-extension.json       # Gemini extension config
├── package.json                # Pi package manifest
└── .claude-plugin/
    └── marketplace.json        # Claude marketplace config

Resources

• ipsw Documentation
• ipsw GitHub
• Discord Community

License

MIT