desktop-commander-overview

desktop-commander-overview is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from developkiko/DsktpCmndr. It costs 67 tokens per session (2,704 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of desktop-commander-overview, MIT.

A guide to Desktop Commander, an MCP service for using an agent with a computer's files, terminals, processes, structured documents, large local data files, and remote machines over SSH.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for terminal work, file and folder operations, CSV search, PDF/DOCX/XLSX handling, image work, process monitoring, large-data tasks, and SSH connections.
Why use it?
It explains how persistent shell sessions and long-running processes let work continue across commands without repeatedly setting up the environment.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the desktop-commander plugin — 6 skills shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/developkiko/dsktpcmndr/desktop-commander-overview
Any agent
npx skills add developkiko/DsktpCmndr --skill desktop-commander-overview
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/developkiko/DsktpCmndr

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install desktop-commander, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills.

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 desktop-commander-overview

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/developkiko/dsktpcmndr/desktop-commander-overview.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/developkiko/dsktpcmndr/desktop-commander-overview)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/developkiko/dsktpcmndr/desktop-commander-overview"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/developkiko/dsktpcmndr/desktop-commander-overview.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,704 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00067 $0.02704
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.01352
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00541
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00270

Measured 4d ago against content hash 7a0e77cae3d4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

desktop-commander-overview scanned grade A 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 4d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

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

`start_process("npm run dev", timeout_ms=...)` keeps the server up. The agent then loops: `edit_block` on the route file, `read_process_output(pid, offset=-30)` to see the server's reload, `start_process("curl -s http://
Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to desktop-commander-overview — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/claude/skills/desktop-commander-overview/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Desktop Commander MCP

Desktop Commander gives the agent reach across the user's actual computer — files, folders, terminals, processes, structured documents, and remote machines reachable over SSH. The tools' detailed schemas (parameters, return shapes, format-specific behavior) live in the MCP itself; this skill explains what they enable and how they compose into common workflows.

What this MCP gives the agent

Persistent shell sessions. Desktop Commander keeps a started process or session alive across tool calls. Inside a single long-lived shell, REPL, or SSH session, state carries forward — environment variables, working directory, activated virtualenvs, open connections, REPL variables — so the agent can cd, activate a venv, then send commands or code into that same session many turns later without re-setup. (Note: separate start_process calls open separate sessions and do not share shell state with each other; persistence is inside one session, not across them.)

Long-running processes. Start a dev server, watcher, build, training run, or test suite in the background and keep working. The MCP returns a process handle the agent can tail, interact with, or terminate across many turns. Long-running commands don't need to block the workflow waiting for a foreground command to exit.

Filesystem reach beyond the IDE workspace. Read, write, move, list, and inspect files anywhere the user has granted scope — Downloads, Documents, project folders outside the IDE, or any other granted folders. Useful for organize-and-clean tasks, batch document work, and any "look at the file my coworker just sent me" request that doesn't fit inside the IDE sandbox.

Surgical edits to existing files. The edit_block tool does exact-string find-and-replace with built-in safety: ambiguous matches fail loudly instead of silently overwriting the wrong thing, and an expected_replacements count prevents partial-match disasters. Lower data-loss risk than rewriting whole files based on the slice you happened to read — though a wrong old_string or wrong expected_replacements can still corrupt content, so review the changed content before considering the edit done.

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 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.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 109 lines · 67 tokens per session scan A 7a0e77cae3d4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

desktop-commander-overview is a skill published in the GitHub repository developkiko/DsktpCmndr (0 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 2,704 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). It is 100% identical to desktop-commander-overview, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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