{
  "status": "shipping",
  "advantages": [],
  "limitations": [],
  "supersedes": [],
  "supersededBy": [],
  "firstSeen": null,
  "lastSeen": null,
  "updated": "2026-10-17",
  "slug": "skippable-frame",
  "term": "Skippable frame (Zstandard)",
  "aliases": [
    "Zstandard skippable frame"
  ],
  "definition": "A Zstandard skippable frame carries length-delimited user metadata that the standard decompression path skips.",
  "note": "Application-specific readers may interpret this metadata even though the codec does not return it as decoded payload. [rfc8878]\n\nIn Hesela's synthetic CLI experiment, changing a skippable generation label preserved the decoded bytes and their SHA-256. The whole stored-stream hash changed. This demonstrates a verification-scope gap, not a hash collision or a codec defect. [hesela-zstd]",
  "related": [
    "zstandard",
    "checksum",
    "backup-manifest",
    "cryptographic-hash"
  ],
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "rfc8878",
      "title": "RFC 8878, section 3.1.2: Skippable Frames",
      "url": "https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8878.html#section-3.1.2",
      "accessed": "2026-10-17"
    },
    {
      "id": "hesela-zstd",
      "title": "Hesela: Compressed archives, dictionary dependencies and validation coverage",
      "url": "https://hesela.com/analyses/compressed-archives-dictionary-dependencies/#metadata",
      "accessed": "2026-10-17"
    }
  ],
  "provenance": [
    "Format definition from RFC 8878; the linked single-build synthetic observation does not evaluate seek-table validation or application-specific metadata authentication."
  ]
}