windows-shell

Windows Shell Skill

Use PowerShell Jobs when you need to run tasks in the background, keep processes alive across multiple steps, or run several commands in parallel on Windows.
This skill is the Windows counterpart of the tmux skill (available on Linux/macOS).

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Quick-start: start a background job

# Start a background job and keep a reference
$job = Start-Job -Name "myTask" -ScriptBlock {
    # Replace with the real command
    python -u my_script.py
}
Write-Host "Job started: $($job.Id) ($($job.Name))"

---

Check job status

# List all jobs
Get-Job

# Check a specific job
Get-Job -Name "myTask" | Select-Object Id, Name, State, HasMoreData

States: Running, Completed, Failed, Stopped.

---

Read output (non-destructive peek)

# Read output without consuming it (Keep = $true)
Receive-Job -Name "myTask" -Keep

Remove -Keep only when you want to consume and discard the buffered output.

---

Wait for completion

# Block until the job finishes (with timeout)
$job = Get-Job -Name "myTask"
$job | Wait-Job -Timeout 120   # seconds

if ($job.State -eq "Completed") {
    Receive-Job $job
} else {
    Write-Warning "Job did not finish in time. State: $($job.State)"
}

---

Run multiple jobs in parallel

$jobs = @(
    Start-Job -Name "task1" -ScriptBlock { python -u worker.py --id 1 },
    Start-Job -Name "task2" -ScriptBlock { python -u worker.py --id 2 },
    Start-Job -Name "task3" -ScriptBlock { python -u worker.py --id 3 }
)

# Wait for all
$jobs | Wait-Job

# Collect results
foreach ($j in $jobs) {
    Write-Host "=== $($j.Name) ==="
    Receive-Job $j
}

---

Start a long-running server / process

# Start server in background
$server = Start-Job -Name "devServer" -ScriptBlock {
    Set-Location $using:PWD
    python -m uvicorn app:app --reload --port 8000
}

# Poll until it is listening
for ($i = 0; $i -lt 30; $i++) {
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
    $out = Receive-Job $server -Keep
    if ($out -match "Application startup complete") { break }
}
Write-Host "Server ready"