watch

watch is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from SethGammon/Citadel. It costs 70 tokens per session (2,992 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A file watcher that checks the working directory for changes and marker comments, then starts matching skills or commands.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to react automatically when files change or when marker comments such as @citadel appear.
Why use it?
It removes the need to notice changes and start the right follow-up action manually. It also collects changed files for batch processing.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the citadel plugin — 48 skills, 7 agents, 2 MCP servers 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/sethgammon/citadel/watch
Any agent
npx skills add SethGammon/Citadel --skill watch
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SethGammon/Citadel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install citadel, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 48 skills, 7 agents, 2 MCP servers.

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 watch

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sethgammon/citadel/watch.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sethgammon/citadel/watch)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sethgammon/citadel/watch"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sethgammon/citadel/watch.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 70 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,992 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 $0.00070 $0.02992
Opus 5 $0.00035 $0.01496
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00598
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00299

Measured 4d ago against content hash 6fbeda8981a8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

watch 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 4d 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/watch/SKILL.md · 323 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 323 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/watch -- File Sentinel

Use when the user wants automatic reactions to file changes or marker comments (@citadel:). Do NOT use for one-off file inspection or tasks that need human judgment per file.

Orientation

Use when: running a file sentinel that triggers a skill or command automatically when watched paths change. Don't use when: monitoring CI status on a PR (use /pr-watch); running a one-shot verification check (use /verify).

Default execution path (READ FIRST)

/watch start does NOT call CronCreate by default. Only pass --remote to use Anthropic's routine system, and only after explicit user confirmation. CronCreate counts against the 15 routine runs / 24h cap — at the default 5-minute interval a watch exhausts the quota in under an hour.

Default flow — /watch start (no --remote flag)

  1. Do Steps 1 and 2 below (check existing watch, determine baseline commit).
  2. Skip Step 3 — do NOT call CronCreate. Leave cronId: null in state.
  3. Write the state file (Step 4) with status: "watching".
  4. Output:
    Watch state created: .planning/watch-state.json
      Baseline: {commit hash, first 7 chars}
    
    To start real-time watching, run in a separate terminal:
      npm run watch:local
    
    For cloud-persistent polling (machine off, user away):
      /watch start --remote     (uses CronCreate, counts against 15/day cap)
    

Opt-in routine flow — /watch start --remote

Only when --remote is explicitly passed:

  1. Confirm: "This will use CronCreate, which counts against your 15 routine runs / 24h quota. At a 5-minute interval this exhausts the quota in under an hour. Continue? (y/N)"
  2. On confirmation, run the full Step 1–5 protocol including CronCreate.

Commands

Command Behavior
/watch start Default: create state, prompt user to run npm run watch:local
/watch start --remote Use CronCreate polling (counts against 15/day quota — requires confirmation)
/watch start --interval {N}m Set poll interval for --remote mode (default: 5m)
/watch stop Stop watching, tear down cron
/watch status Show watch state, last scan time, pending actions
/watch scan Run a single scan now (manual trigger)

Read the full file on GitHub · 323 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. 4d ago First seen · 323 lines · 70 tokens per session scan A 6fbeda8981a8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

watch is a skill published in the GitHub repository SethGammon/Citadel (916 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 70 tokens to every session and 2,992 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-30.

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