inspect-macos-persistence

inspect-macos-persistence is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from gaelic-ghost/socket. It costs 48 tokens per session (481 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A procedure for finding ways that software starts automatically or runs repeatedly on macOS without deleting evidence.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for reviewing login items, background items, launch agents and daemons, extensions, profiles, shell startup files, scheduled jobs, browser add-ons, and helpers.
Why use it?
It helps reveal unwanted startup or recurring activity while preserving the files, service state, and installation history needed for investigation.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the cybersecurity-skills plugin — 31 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/gaelic-ghost/socket/inspect-macos-persistence
Any agent
npx skills add gaelic-ghost/socket --skill inspect-macos-persistence
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gaelic-ghost/socket

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install cybersecurity-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 31 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 inspect-macos-persistence

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gaelic-ghost/socket/inspect-macos-persistence.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/gaelic-ghost/socket/inspect-macos-persistence)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gaelic-ghost/socket/inspect-macos-persistence"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gaelic-ghost/socket/inspect-macos-persistence.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 481 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00048 $0.00481
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00241
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00096
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00048

Measured yesterday against content hash e5e462e13e33, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

inspect-macos-persistence 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 yesterday.

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.

plugins/cybersecurity-skills/skills/inspect-macos-persistence/SKILL.md · 36 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 36 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Inspect macOS Persistence

Overview

Inventory registered and file-backed persistence, then correlate it with loaded runtime state and installation history. Read files and official service state; never manage launchd by editing its internal state.

Read references/macos-persistence-surfaces.md for prioritized surfaces and evidence fields.

Workflow

  1. Record host/build, user domains, event timeline, and the suspected executable or label.
    • Record whether the system is a physical Mac or macOS guest, plus the guest's restore image/build, VM tool/framework, integrations, baseline/reset state, and known virtualization artifacts.
  2. Inventory user-visible registrations.
    • Review Login Items and background-item state, profiles, extensions, browser add-ons, and app-managed helpers.
  3. Inventory launch services.
    • Inspect user/system LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons as files and query service state through launchctl read operations.
    • Record label, domain, program/arguments, working directory, environment, sockets, keep-alive/start conditions, owner/permissions, signer, and loaded PID/status.
  4. Inspect adjacent persistence.
    • Review shell startup files, scheduled jobs, package receipts/scripts, privileged helpers, system/network extensions, authorization plugins, and current platform-specific surfaces justified by evidence.
  5. Correlate provenance and runtime.
    • Identify parent installer/app, creation/change time, signature/notarization, executable hash, running process ancestry, files, network, and logs.
  6. Classify each item.
    • Expected, suspicious, confirmed malicious, disabled/orphaned, or unresolved; explain evidence and impact.
    • Keep guest-observed persistence distinct from physical-host proof when anti-VM, hardware, recoveryOS, kernel/system-extension, or device behavior may differ.
  7. Preserve before containment.
    • Record files and service state before using official launchctl bootout or app/uninstaller paths in the containment workflow.

Read the full file on GitHub · 36 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files 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. yesterday First seen · 36 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A e5e462e13e33

Subscribe to this mod's changes

inspect-macos-persistence is a skill published in the GitHub repository gaelic-ghost/socket (7 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 481 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 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 2026-09-03.

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