extracting-logs-with-logcat

extracting-logs-with-logcat is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from skydoves/android-testing-skills. It costs 278 tokens per session (4,719 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide to reading Android device logs with logcat, the system that records messages from apps and Android itself. It covers live viewing, saved log output, filters, buffers, priorities, and structured formats.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps debug test and smoke-test failures, reproduce CI problems, capture logs on failure, filter messages by app or severity, and check whether release builds remove debug logging.
Why use it?
It makes it easier to isolate useful failure information when device logs are large, disappear after an app stops, or come from a less obvious Android log buffer.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit It helps debug test and smoke-test failures, reproduce CI problems, capture logs on failure, filter messages by app or severity, and check whether release builds remove debug logging.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat
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 skydoves/android-testing-skills --skill extracting-logs-with-logcat
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/skydoves/android-testing-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 extracting-logs-with-logcat

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat/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 extracting-logs-with-logcat

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skydoves/android-testing-skills/extracting-logs-with-logcat.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 278 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,719 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 $0.00278 $0.04719
Opus 5 $0.00139 $0.02360
Sonnet 5 $0.00056 $0.00944
Haiku 4.5 $0.00028 $0.00472

Measured 9d ago against content hash e6d5db499a75, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

extracting-logs-with-logcat 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.

adb/observability/extracting-logs-with-logcat/SKILL.md · 365 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 365 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Extracting Logs With logcat — Reading Device Logs

This skill covers adb logcat end-to-end: streaming vs dumping, buffer selection, filter expressions, format flags, PID and time filters, file rotation, and the R8 rule that strips Log.d from release builds. The companion CI capture-on-failure pattern lives in ../../automation/scripting-adb-for-ci/SKILL.md.

When to use this skill

  • A test fails on CI; the developer needs to dump the device log into the artefact archive.
  • The developer's adb logcat | grep MyApp is overwhelming the SSH session — the logcat-side filter is the fix.
  • A scenario only reproduces inside system_server or crash buffers, not the default main.
  • The developer wants structured logs (-v json) for machine ingestion.
  • A Log.d("Sensitive", "...") call appears to leak in release — the R8 -assumenosideeffects rule is missing.
  • Logs disappear after the app is killed by Doze/ANR — --pid plus a re-resolution loop is needed.

When NOT to use this skill

  • Capturing a screenshot or video. Use ../../capture/capturing-screenshots-and-screenrecord/SKILL.md.
  • Pulling a generic file from the device. Use ../../transfer/extracting-test-artifacts/SKILL.md.
  • The whole script — retries, port forwarding, parallel device fan-out. Use ../../automation/scripting-adb-for-ci/SKILL.md.
  • Driving gestures or settings changes. Use ../../control/injecting-input-and-state/SKILL.md.

Prerequisites

  • adb get-state returns device. See ../../devices/connecting-to-devices/SKILL.md.
  • For -v json: device API 30+ (Android 11+). Stack with -v UTC -v year for unambiguous timestamps.
  • For per-PID filtering: adb shell pidof -s <pkg> requires API 24+ (toybox pidof -s); on older releases use adb shell ps -A | grep <pkg>.

Three fundamental operations

Command Behavior
adb logcat Stream the device log to stdout; runs until interrupted.
adb logcat -d "Dumps the log and exits." Snapshot mode — perfect for CI.
adb logcat -c "Clears the log buffer." Run this before reproducing a bug.

Read the full file on GitHub · 365 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 · 365 lines · 278 tokens per session scan A e6d5db499a75

Subscribe to this mod's changes

extracting-logs-with-logcat is a skill published in the GitHub repository skydoves/android-testing-skills (319 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 278 tokens to every session and 4,719 once invoked, about $0.0014 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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