Gen and Vercel Partner to Bring Independent Safety Verification to the AI Skills Ecosystem

Gen's Agent Trust Hub will bring risk verification to skills.sh, protecting developers and users from unsafe AI skills

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- As AI agents evolve from assistants into autonomous digital actors capable of executing real-world tasks, Gen (NASDAQ: GEN) today announced a strategic partnership with Vercel to bring independent safety verification to the growing AI skills ecosystem at https://skills.sh/. Vercel's platform serves more than 6 million developers worldwide, and skills.sh – its open directory for reusable AI agent skills – serves as a discovery layer where developers can publish and install modular capabilities that extend what AI agents can do.

Through this collaboration, Gen's Agent Trust Hub (ATH) will provide security verification and transparent risk ratings for skills published on the platform. Each skill will be evaluated and classified as Safe, Low Risk, High Risk, or Critical Risk, giving developers and users greater clarity before installing or executing agent capabilities.

"AI agents are becoming powerful digital actors," said Howie Xu, Chief AI & Innovation Officer at Gen. "Trust must be built into the ecosystem itself. By partnering with Vercel, we are embedding independent verification directly into the skills layer, helping innovation and safety scale together."

"Developers want to move quickly, and users want confidence," said Andrew Qu, Chief of Software at Vercel. "This partnership with Gen's Agent Trust Hub helps ensure that as AI capabilities grow, so does transparency."

Building Trust Into the Skills Layer
AI agents are no longer limited to generating responses. They browse the web, connect to APIs, access sensitive data, and trigger multi-step workflows autonomously. As their capabilities expand, so does the importance of understanding the security posture of the skills that power them.

Malicious or poorly designed skills can introduce vulnerabilities, expose data, or enable fraud without users realizing it. Until now, determining whether a skill was safe often relied on limited metadata or community reputation.

This partnership introduces independent, AI-driven verification directly into the discovery experience. Gen's Agent Trust Hub analyzes skills using advanced risk modeling and threat intelligence, powered by Gen Threat Labs, to detect security weaknesses, unsafe permissions, behavioral anomalies, and potential malicious intent. Each skill receives a clear verification classification:

• Safe — Verified against security best practices
• Low Risk — Minor risk indicators detected
• High Risk — Significant security concerns identified
• Critical Risk — Severe or malicious behavior detected

By embedding these ratings into the skills ecosystem itself, Gen and Vercel are making trust visible before risk becomes consequence.

From Vision to Infrastructure: Securing the Agentic Future
This integration signals growing ecosystem adoption of Gen's Agent Trust Hub as the trust layer for autonomous AI systems.

As AI transitions from assistive to autonomous, skills become the building blocks of capability. Ensuring those building blocks are secure is essential to responsible innovation. Where traditional cybersecurity protects devices and networks, Agent Trust Hub is designed to protect AI agents and the expanding ecosystems they depend on.

Through this partnership, Gen and Vercel are advancing a shared goal: making security an integrated part of the AI development lifecycle, not an afterthought. The integration of Agent Trust Hub into skills.sh represents another step toward establishing the trust infrastructure required for the agentic era.

About Gen
Gen (NASDAQ: GEN) is a global company dedicated to powering Digital Freedom through its trusted consumer brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, MoneyLion and more. The Gen family of consumer brands is rooted in providing financial empowerment and cyber safety for the first digital generations. Today, Gen empowers people to live their digital lives safely, privately and confidently for generations to come. Gen brings award-winning products and services in cybersecurity, online privacy, identity protection and financial wellness to nearly 500 million users in more than 150 countries. Learn more at GenDigital.com.

About the Gen Threat Labs
Gen Threat Labs is the Cyber Safety research team within Gen, focused on uncovering and analyzing the latest digital threats and scams worldwide. Rooted in data, research, and technical expertise, the team identifies patterns and risks that shape the evolving cyber landscape. Their insights power the security technologies that protect people across Gen's portfolio of trusted brands, including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, and others.

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SOURCE Gen Digital Inc.