background-worker

background-worker is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills. It costs 84 tokens per session (470 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A setup guide for running an unattended worker in a cloud virtual machine that does not automatically shut down. It covers queue workers, bots, scrapers, schedulers, and other services that need to stay available.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to run long-lived background jobs, polling agents, chat bots, scheduled scrapers, or persistent agent loops on a cloud machine.
Why use it?
It avoids the time limits of temporary development environments, which can stop while a job is still running. It also explains how to keep the machine's disk and restart the worker after the machine resumes.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to run long-lived background jobs, polling agents, chat bots, scheduled scrapers, or persistent agent loops on a cloud machine.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills/background-worker
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills --skill background-worker
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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.

agentmods badge for background-worker

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills/background-worker.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills/background-worker)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills/background-worker"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills/background-worker.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 84 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 470 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 2 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00084 $0.00470
Opus 5 $0.00042 $0.00235
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00094
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00047

Measured 7d ago against content hash 19a6e26034f8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

background-worker scanned grade C with 2 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 7d 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.

Downloads and executes remote codehighSupply chain

curl | sh runs whatever the server returns today, which is not necessarily what it returned when this was reviewed.

`curl -fsSL https://box.ascii.dev/install | sh`, then `box login "$BOX_API_KEY" --json`.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

`curl -fsSL https://box.ascii.dev/install | sh`, then `box login "$BOX_API_KEY" --json`.
skills/background-worker/SKILL.md · 36 lines

What it actually says

Background / 24-7 worker (Box)

Use this when work must keep running unattended: a queue worker, a Telegram/Discord bot, a polling agent, a scheduled scraper, or any always-on service. Ephemeral sandboxes (E2B microVMs, Codespaces) auto-die on a timer — wrong tool. A Box can be told to never auto-stop, persists its disk, and keeps a dedicated IPv4.

Why Box

  • No session cap — runs hours/days/indefinitely.
  • Persistent + resumable — disk survives stop; box resume brings it back.
  • Cheap steady-state — flat per-second pricing beats ephemeral providers (50 always-on VMs ≈ $432/mo vs ~$4k+).

Prereqs

curl -fsSL https://box.ascii.dev/install | sh, then box login "$BOX_API_KEY" --json.

Recipe

box_id="$(box new --no-auto-stop --json | jq -r 'select(.event == "ready") | .id')"
box ssh "$box_id" -- bash -s < ./setup.sh
box ssh "$box_id" -- "cd /app && nohup ./worker.sh > /var/log/worker.log 2>&1 &"
box extend "$box_id" --ttl 2592000                 # optional: 30-day deadline

Survival rules

Running processes do not survive stop/resume or fork — only the disk does. Make startup idempotent and relaunch after resume; use a process manager (systemd, pm2, nohup).

Limits

EU-only; disk-level snapshots; 100 active VMs soft cap; max 30-day TTL per extension (re-extend as needed).

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.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 36 lines · 84 tokens per session scan C 19a6e26034f8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

background-worker is a skill published in the GitHub repository ariana-dot-dev/cloud-sandbox-vm-skills (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 84 tokens to every session and 470 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (downloads and executes remote code, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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