What a probe declares about itself

Before running a probe against something that costs money, it is worth knowing what it sends, what it is looking for, and which detector it brings.

Example

garak --plugin_info probes.test.Blank 2>&1 | head -18

goal is the probe's own sentence about what it is trying to do. It is the most useful line, and it is written for a person.

primary_detector is the detector the probe brings with it. Nothing in your command named any.AnyOutput; the probe did.

active says whether a bare family name includes it. This one is false, which is why probes.test alone does not run it and probes.test.Blank does.

tags and tier are how a probe is selected in bulk: tags map to the standards taxonomies, and tier is roughly how much it matters. intent is the risk category it reports under.

The detector comes from the probe, not from you. That is the piece people miss when a verdict looks wrong: you chose what to send, and the probe chose what counts as a problem. Lesson 12 is how to override it.

Try it yourself

Run --plugin_info on a probe from the goodside family and read its goal.
Find a probe whose active is true and one whose is false.
Look up what tier means in the garak documentation.

Previous--spec: choosing what runs

This is what real progress feels like.