What is background-process-mcp GEMINI.md?

Instructions for a background-process manager that controls commands which keep running, such as development servers and file watchers.

Starting, stopping, and managing long-running or interactive processes.

They clarify when to run a command in the background and when to use the normal shell for short tasks.

How waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp configures Gemini CLI

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp/main/GEMINI.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp

Made for: Gemini CLI.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp/gemini-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp/gemini-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp/gemini-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp/gemini-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

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Per session 512 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 512 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00512	$0.00512
Opus 5.5	$0.00205	$0.00205
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00102	$0.00102
Haiku 4.5	$0.00051	$0.00051

Measured 2mo ago against content hash ddd2817c878c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

background-process-mcp GEMINI.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

GEMINI.md · 33 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 33 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Background Process Manager Extension

This extension provides a robust set of tools for managing background processes. It is your primary interface for any long-running or interactive tasks.

Usage Strategy

Core Principles

Long-Running & Interactive Processes: You MUST use start_process for any command that does not exit immediately or may require user input. This is non-negotiable.
- Examples: npm run dev, vite, tsc --watch, servers, or any kind of file watcher.
Short-Lived Commands (The Exception): For short-lived, synchronous commands (e.g., ls, cat, pnpm test, pnpm build), you should ALWAYS prefer your native shell tool (e.g., run_shell_command).
- Only use run_command_sync as a fallback if the native tool is failing, or for specific, niche reasons where running the command through this MCP provides a clear advantage.

Available Tools

start_process: Starts a new process in the background. This is the required tool for all long-running commands (servers, watchers) or interactive tasks.
- command (string): The command to run.
stop_process: Stops a running background process.
- processId (string): The UUID of the process to stop.
clear_process: Clears a stopped background process from the list.
- processId (string): The UUID of the process to clear.
get_process_output: Gets the recent output for a background process. Can specify head or tail.
- processId (string): The UUID of the process.
- head (number, optional): Get the first N lines of output.
- tail (number, optional): Get the last N lines of output.
get_server_status: Gets the current status of the Background Process Manager server.
list_processes: Gets a list of all processes being managed by the Background Process Manager.
run_command_sync: Runs a short-lived command and waits for it to complete. You should prefer your native shell tools for this. Use this tool only when there is a specific need to run a synchronous command within the context of this MCP.
- command (string): The command to run.

Read the full file on GitHub · 33 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 33 lines · 512 tokens per session scan A ddd2817c878c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

background-process-mcp GEMINI.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository waylaidwanderer/background-process-mcp (11 stars, last pushed 12mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 512 tokens to every session, about $0.0020 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

DevOps and cloud

background-process-mcp GEMINI.md next to 6 instructions from other repositories
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background-process-mcp: Instructions file for Gemini CLI