OpenParable
Skip to content
← Back to skills

Sevenzip Format

Documents
sevenzip-format

Sevenzip Format is an Agent Skill for documents published in the adamhathcock/sharpcompress repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Reference the 7z/7zip archive container format. Use when an AI agent needs to answer questions or make code changes involving 7z signatures, headers, encoded headers, NID/property IDs, packed streams, folders/coders, bind pairs, substreams, file metadata properties, or SharpCompress 7Zip parsing behavior.

View on GitHub ↗
QUICK START

How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/adamhathcock/sharpcompress/blob/HEAD/.agents/skills/sevenzip-format/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/sevenzip-format, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

Sevenzip Format

Use this skill for 7z container-format work. It provides a local Markdown conversion of the LZMA SDK 7zFormat.txt reference.

Reference

  • Read references/7z-format.md when the task depends on 7z binary layout, header property IDs, stream/folder relationships, metadata fields, or encoded headers.
  • Treat the reference as the LZMA SDK 7z format description version 4.59. It describes the container grammar, not compression method internals; method-specific codec details are outside this skill.
  • Preserve source field names and numeric IDs when mapping the spec to code. The converted reference keeps source spelling inside syntax blocks where exact matching may matter.

Workflow

  1. Identify which part of the 7z container is involved: signature/start header, packed streams, coders/folders, substreams, files info, or encoded headers.
  2. Open the relevant section in references/7z-format.md and use the table of contents to avoid loading unrelated details.
  3. When implementing or reviewing parsing logic, pay special attention to optional blocks marked with [], 7z's variable-length UINT64 encoding, and little-endian REAL_UINT64 fields.
  4. Cross-check behavior against SharpCompress tests and existing parser conventions before changing public API or stream behavior.