Reverse Engineer Network Protocols

The skill covers techniques for capturing, analyzing, and documenting network protocols, aimed at security research, interoperability work, and debugging. It follows a fixed sequence: clarify the goals, constraints, and required inputs; apply relevant best practices and validate the outcome; and provide actionable steps with verification. When a request needs concrete patterns or worked examples of protocol capture and analysis, it opens resources/implementation-playbook.md for the detailed version rather than improvising.

Use it for protocol reverse engineering tasks, or when guidance, best practices, or checklists for protocol reverse engineering are needed. Do not use it for tasks unrelated to protocol reverse engineering, or when a different domain or tool is the better fit. It is not a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review, and it stops to ask for clarification when required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.

Input is the protocol-analysis request and its constraints (what is being captured, for what purpose - security research, interoperability, or debugging). Output is actionable steps and verification guidance for the reverse-engineering task, expanded into detailed capture/analysis patterns and worked examples via resources/implementation-playbook.md when the request calls for that depth.

Security researchers and engineers who need to capture, analyze, and document an unfamiliar network protocol - whether to assess its security, build an interoperable implementation, or debug a communication issue - and want a structured clarify-apply-verify workflow instead of an ad hoc investigation.