mem-watchdog-ops

mem-watchdog-ops is a skill for Claude Code from chf3198/copilot-governance. It costs 35 tokens per session (1,028 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A guide for managing Crostini Mem Watchdog, a background service that watches memory use in Linux development sessions. It covers checking status, reading logs, and adjusting safety limits.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to check watchdog activity, interpret actions such as stopping processes, and choose safer memory thresholds for general development or Playwright automation.
Why use it?
It helps diagnose and reduce out-of-memory crashes when tools such as VS Code, Chrome, or Playwright use too much memory.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Good fit Use it to check watchdog activity, interpret actions such as stopping processes, and choose safer memory thresholds for general development or Playwright automation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops
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 chf3198/copilot-governance --skill mem-watchdog-ops
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chf3198/copilot-governance

Made for: Claude Code.

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 mem-watchdog-ops

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for mem-watchdog-ops

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chf3198/copilot-governance/mem-watchdog-ops.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 35 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,028 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. 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 $0.00035 $0.01028
Opus 5 $0.00017 $0.00514
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00206
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00103

Measured 10d ago against content hash cac06e88997a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

mem-watchdog-ops scanned grade B with 1 finding 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 10d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (watchdog-snapshot.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

- Prefer `systemctl --user` only — never `sudo systemctl`.
skills/mem-watchdog-ops/SKILL.md · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Mem Watchdog Ops Skill

Use this skill when working in constrained Crostini environments where VS Code, Chrome/Playwright, and extension host memory spikes can trigger OOM.

Ground Rules

  • Never read or reason from SwapFree values on Crostini.
  • Prefer systemctl --user only — never sudo systemctl.
  • Treat the mem-watchdog daemon as independent runtime authority.
  • For tuning, use extension settings (memWatchdog.*) so the extension writes config and restarts service safely.

Fast Workflows

  1. Status snapshot

    • Use chat participant command: /memwatchdog status
    • Or run helper: ~/.copilot/skills/mem-watchdog-ops/watchdog-snapshot.sh
  2. Recent actions / diagnosis

    • /memwatchdog logs
    • Look for action markers in journal:
      • ACTION(SIGTERM):
      • ACTION(SIGKILL):
      • RECOVERY(SIGTERM):
  3. Apply tuning profile

    • /memwatchdog tune balanced — general dev use (warn 3.4 GB, emerg 3.8 GB)
    • /memwatchdog tune conservative — earlier intervention (warn 3.0 GB, emerg 3.4 GB)
    • /memwatchdog tune playwright — more headroom for automation (warn 3.8 GB, emerg 4.2 GB)
  4. Manual protective action

    • /memwatchdog act kill chrome
    • /memwatchdog act restart service

Tuning Guidance

  • balanced: general dev use — recommended for Copilot Chat multi-agent workloads that peak at 3.0–3.5 GB
  • conservative: earlier intervention, safer on tight RAM — may cause more Chrome kills
  • playwright: more headroom for headed browser automation sessions

When recommending profile changes, explain expected trade-off between stability and interruption frequency.

Kill Hierarchy (daemon v20260329.1+)

Condition Action
MemAvailable ≤ 15% SIGKILL Chrome/Playwright
MemAvailable ≤ 25% SIGTERM Chrome/Playwright (deferred if Playwright active)
PSI full avg10 > 25% SIGTERM Chrome (deferred if Playwright active)
VS Code RSS ≥ 3.8 GB SIGKILL Chrome (always — even during Playwright sessions); if none → kill_vscode_main()
VS Code RSS ≥ 3.4 GB SIGTERM Chrome (deferred if Playwright active); if none → kill helper (Shared Process, File Watcher, Network Service); if none → cgroup throttle/reclaim
RSS velocity spike Kill lowest-value helper — never a language server or Extension Host at normal severity
Chrome PIDs > 3 SIGKILL oldest excess (skipped when Playwright is active)

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 10d ago First seen · 87 lines · 35 tokens per session scan B cac06e88997a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

mem-watchdog-ops is a skill published in the GitHub repository chf3198/copilot-governance (1 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 1,028 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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