windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion

windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion is a skill for Claude Code from microsoft/win-dev-skills. It costs 54 tokens per session (1,085 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A WinDbg workflow for investigating failed memory allocations in native user-mode programs. It distinguishes limited virtual address space, fragmented free space, and system commit pressure rather than treating every failure as a memory leak.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when an application, service, or user-mode driver host reports out-of-memory or a failed heap or virtual-memory allocation.
Why use it?
Free physical RAM does not prove that an allocation can succeed. The workflow compares the requested allocation with the process's address-space layout and records limits in the evidence.

Skill for Claude Code ✓ vendor

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the windbg plugin — 11 skills, 2 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it when an application, service, or user-mode driver host reports out-of-memory or a failed heap or virtual-memory allocation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion
About the project

microsoft/win-dev-skills is a collection of AI-agent instructions and tools for creating native Windows applications with WinUI 3 and the Windows App SDK. Windows developers use it to guide agents through app development tasks from scaffolding and design to testing, packaging, and release. The catalogue entries are its agents, skills, and plugin components.

microsoft/win-dev-skills · 472 stars · on GitHub

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 microsoft/win-dev-skills --skill windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/win-dev-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install windbg, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 11 skills, 2 agents.

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 windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion/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 windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/win-dev-skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,085 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00054 $0.01085
Opus 5.5 $0.00022 $0.00434
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00011 $0.00217
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00109

Measured 8d ago against content hash 281202874f7a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion 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 8d 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.

plugins/windbg/skills/windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion/SKILL.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Virtual Memory Exhaustion

Load windbg-diagnostic-method first if it is not already loaded in this conversation, and apply it throughout for evidence ranking, hypothesis testing, confidence calibration, independent review, and report validation. This skill adds the bug-family-specific commands and evidence requirements.

Detection

Investigate E_OUTOFMEMORY (0x8007000E), STATUS_NO_MEMORY (0xC0000017), bad_alloc, or failed heap/virtual allocations in an application, service, or user-mode driver host (including UMDF). Record the actual API, requested size/alignment, architecture, flags, and error. Free physical RAM does not rule out insufficient virtual address space, commit pressure, or applicable limits.

Workflow

1. Examine the process VA map

!address -summary
!address
!heap -s

Compare available regions with the attempted allocation's contiguous range and alignment requirements. Distinguish reserved, committed, free, image, mapped, stack, and heap ranges. A large reservation consumes VA without committing its entire range. Heap internals may require more than the user's requested bytes.

Report unavailable pages/map data rather than inferring completeness from a limited dump.

2. Separate pressure mechanisms

Mechanism Evidence needed
VA exhaustion Process address range/architecture and little usable free VA
Fragmentation Free space exists, but no suitable contiguous/aligned region
System commit pressure Commit usage/limit near the failure, not just free RAM
Process/job memory limit Actual configured limit and relevant usage/accounting
Allocation policy/API failure API-specific constraints, flags, or allocator policy

Use contemporaneous system memory counters or an appropriate live/kernel session for system commit data. A process PEB is not a documented MaximumCommit source. A process's committed bytes alone do not establish a system-wide or job limit.

For 32-bit targets inspect /LARGEADDRESSAWARE and the host architecture; 2 GB versus up to 4 GB depends on those settings. Verify current documented limits for the target Windows version and architecture instead of applying one 64-bit limit to every system.

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 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. 8d ago First seen · 114 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 281202874f7a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

windbg-user-virtual-memory-exhaustion is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/win-dev-skills (472 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 1,085 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-10-08.

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