qemu-for-kernel-development

qemu-for-kernel-development is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills. It costs 78 tokens per session (952 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to using QEMU, a virtual machine emulator, to test Linux kernels and drivers without relying on physical hardware. It covers custom kernel boots, virtual devices, small root filesystems, and fast test cycles.

In plain words
What is it for?
Running kernel boot checks, testing drivers with virtual disks and networks, building QEMU images with Buildroot or Yocto, and iterating through driver changes.
Why use it?
It lets developers reproduce kernel and driver changes in an isolated virtual machine, reducing the need to reboot or risk a real device during development.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Running kernel boot checks, testing drivers with virtual disks and networks, building QEMU images with Buildroot or Yocto, and iterating through driver changes.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development
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 mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills --skill qemu-for-kernel-development
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-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 qemu-for-kernel-development

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development/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 qemu-for-kernel-development

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/qemu-for-kernel-development.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 78 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 952 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00078 $0.00952
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00476
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00190
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00095

Measured 9d ago against content hash cc038b7526a4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

qemu-for-kernel-development 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 9d 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.

skills/kernel-dev/qemu-for-kernel-development/SKILL.md · 113 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 113 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

QEMU for Kernel Development

Purpose

Guide agents through QEMU-based kernel and driver development workflows: building/booting custom kernels, attaching virtio block/network, using Buildroot or minimal initramfs, and rapid module test cycles — focused on kernel dev vs general skills/virtualization/qemu-kvm.

When to Use

  • Test kernel patch without bare metal
  • Develop driver against virtio or emulated DT platform
  • CI kernel boot smoke test
  • NFS or 9p root for fast edit-compile-test

Workflow

1. Minimal direct kernel boot (arm64 virt)

qemu-system-aarch64 \
  -machine virt -cpu cortex-a57 -smp 4 -m 2G \
  -kernel arch/arm64/boot/Image \
  -append "console=ttyAMA0 root=/dev/vda rw" \
  -drive if=virtio,file=rootfs.ext4,format=raw \
  -netdev user,id=net0 -device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \
  -nographic

x86_64:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 4G -smp 4 \
  -kernel arch/x86/boot/bzImage \
  -append "console=ttyS0 root=/dev/vda rw" \
  -drive file=rootfs.img,format=raw,if=virtio \
  -nographic

2. Buildroot rootfs loop

cd buildroot
make qemu_aarch64_virt_defconfig
make
# output/images/Image, rootfs.ext4

Integrate custom kernel: set BR2_LINUX_KERNEL_CUSTOM_VERSION or external tree.

3. Out-of-tree module test

# on host — cross build
make -C $KERNEL_SRC M=$PWD modules
# in guest or via initramfs
insmod mydriver.ko
dmesg | tail

Share tree with 9p:

-fsdev local,id=dev,path=$PWD,security_model=none \
-device virtio-9p-pci,fsdev=dev,mount_tag=hostshare
# guest: mount -t 9p -o trans=virtio hostshare /mnt

4. GDB stub for kernel

qemu-system-aarch64 ... -s -S
gdb vmlinux
(gdb) target remote :1234
(gdb) break start_kernel

Use CONFIG_KGDB for live kernel debugging after boot.

5. Device tree overrides

qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt -dtb myboard.dtb ...

virt machine provides virtio devices; platform drivers can target QEMU -device models.

Read the full file on GitHub · 113 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. 9d ago First seen · 113 lines · 78 tokens per session scan A cc038b7526a4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

qemu-for-kernel-development is a skill published in the GitHub repository mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills (203 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 78 tokens to every session and 952 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.