strace-ltrace

strace-ltrace is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills. It costs 90 tokens per session (1,763 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to strace and ltrace, Linux tools that record the system calls and library functions a program uses.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect file access, network activity, process creation, memory operations, and calls made by a running or newly started program.
Why use it?
It helps reveal what a program is doing when its behaviour is wrong but it does not crash or provide a useful debugger trace.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

not rated 203repo +8 2mo ago A scan Socket: passSnyk: passSkillSpector: warn 90 tokens original MIT

Good fit Use it to inspect file access, network activity, process creation, memory operations, and calls made by a running or newly started program.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/strace-ltrace
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 strace-ltrace
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 strace-ltrace

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/strace-ltrace"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills/strace-ltrace.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 90 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,763 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
  • Socket pass 18 Mar 2026
  • Snyk pass 21 Feb 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 2 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Privilege Escalation · line 122
    Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
    Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
  • high System Prompt Leakage · line 127
    Skill contains instructions that could directly expose system prompts, internal rules, or hidden instructions to users or external parties.
    Fix: Remove any instructions that reveal, print, or output system prompts or internal rules. System instructions should never be exposed to end users.
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 $0.00090 $0.01763
Opus 5 $0.00045 $0.00881
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00353
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00176

Measured 9d ago against content hash 5556f01f71ff, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

strace-ltrace 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/profilers/strace-ltrace/SKILL.md · 213 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 213 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

strace / ltrace

Purpose

Guide agents through tracing system calls with strace and library calls with ltrace — the most effective tools for diagnosing incorrect binary behaviour without a crash or debugger.

Triggers

  • "My program behaves incorrectly — how do I trace what it's doing?"
  • "How do I find what files a binary is opening?"
  • "strace shows ENOENT — how do I interpret it?"
  • "How do I trace network calls with strace?"
  • "What is ltrace and how does it differ from strace?"
  • "How do I trace a running process?"

Workflow

1. Basic strace usage

# Trace all syscalls of a command
strace ./myapp arg1 arg2

# Attach to running process
strace -p 12345

# Trace child processes too (-f = follow fork)
strace -f ./myapp

# Save to file (raw output — not stdout)
strace ./myapp 2> trace.txt

# Most useful: timestamps + summary
strace -t -f ./myapp 2>&1 | head -100

2. Filter by syscall category

# Trace file operations only
strace -e trace=file ./myapp

# Trace network syscalls
strace -e trace=network ./myapp

# Trace specific syscalls
strace -e trace=open,openat,read,write ./myapp

# Trace process management
strace -e trace=process ./myapp

# Trace memory operations
strace -e trace=memory ./myapp

# Trace signals
strace -e trace=signal ./myapp

# Multiple categories
strace -e trace=file,network ./myapp
Category Syscalls included
file open, openat, stat, access, unlink, rename, ...
network socket, connect, bind, accept, send, recv, ...
process fork, exec, wait, clone, exit, ...
memory mmap, munmap, mprotect, brk, ...
signal kill, sigaction, sigprocmask, ...
ipc pipe, socket pair, shmget, ...
desc close, dup, poll, select, epoll, ...

3. Interpreting common errors

# See return values and errors
strace -e trace=file ./myapp 2>&1 | grep -E "ENOENT|EPERM|EACCES|ENOTSUP"
Error Meaning Common cause
ENOENT No such file or directory Config file missing, wrong path
EACCES Permission denied File permissions, SELinux
EPERM Operation not permitted Missing capability, suid needed
EADDRINUSE Address already in use Port already bound
ETIMEDOUT Connection timed out Network unreachable, firewall
ECONNREFUSED Connection refused Server not listening
EAGAIN Resource temporarily unavailable Non-blocking I/O, try again
ENOMEM Out of memory Allocation failed
EBADF Bad file descriptor Using closed/invalid fd
ENOEXEC Exec format error Wrong binary format for arch

Read the full file on GitHub · 213 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. 9d ago First seen · 213 lines · 90 tokens per session scan A 5556f01f71ff

Subscribe to this mod's changes

strace-ltrace is a skill published in the GitHub repository mohitmishra786/low-level-dev-skills (203 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 90 tokens to every session and 1,763 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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