macbook-desktop-mode

macbook-desktop-mode is a skill for Claude Code from terrylica/cc-skills. It costs 33 tokens per session (3,373 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A configuration guide for using a MacBook as a desktop computer that stays connected to power and USB devices. It covers sleep and wake problems, battery charging behavior, and audio-device recovery.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps configure power settings, powered USB hubs, software-controlled USB resets, and a self-recovering audio monitor for a permanent MacBook workstation.
Why use it?
It addresses USB microphones or other devices disappearing after sleep, unnecessary battery charge cycling, and unreliable always-on setups.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool; positional $N argument.

Part of the devops-tools plugin — 24 skills shipped together , and of cc-skills

Good fit It helps configure power settings, powered USB hubs, software-controlled USB resets, and a self-recovering audio monitor for a permanent MacBook workstation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode
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 terrylica/cc-skills --skill macbook-desktop-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/terrylica/cc-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install devops-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 24 skills.

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 macbook-desktop-mode

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode/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 macbook-desktop-mode

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/terrylica/cc-skills/macbook-desktop-mode.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,373 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 2 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 8 findings, up to medium

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 →

  • medium Privilege Escalation · line 94
    Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
    Fix: Avoid sudo/root unless strictly required. Prefer least-privilege patterns. If elevation is needed, document the justification and scope.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 227
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 228
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 252
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 255
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 227
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 255
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
  • medium Rogue Agent · line 322
    Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
    Fix: Remove any persistence mechanisms (cron jobs, startup scripts, state files). Skills should not maintain state across sessions without explicit user consent.
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 $0.00033 $0.03373
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.01687
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00675
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00337

Measured 2d ago against content hash cb90580b7d1a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

macbook-desktop-mode scanned grade B with 2 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 2d 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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

sudo pmset -c sleep 0

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- **Synchronous uhubctl/curl calls** — acceptable because the main RunLoop queues CoreAudio callbacks during blocking; no events lost, just delayed by recovery time
plugins/devops-tools/skills/macbook-desktop-mode/SKILL.md · 340 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 340 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MacBook Desktop Mode

A holistic configuration guide for running a MacBook as an always-on-AC desktop workstation. Solves two interconnected problems: USB devices (especially USB 1.1 audio) disappearing during sleep/wake cycles, and unnecessary battery degradation from constant charge cycling.

Self-Evolving Skill: This skill improves through use. If instructions are wrong, parameters drifted, or a workaround was needed — fix this file immediately, don't defer. Only update for real, reproducible issues.

When to Use This Skill

  • USB microphone or audio device disappears after sleep/wake
  • Battery is cycling unnecessarily on a plugged-in Mac
  • Setting up a MacBook as a permanent desktop workstation
  • Configuring pmset for always-on-AC use
  • Setting up a powered USB hub with uhubctl for software-controlled USB resets
  • Enhancing the AudioDeviceMonitor Swift daemon with self-healing recovery

Root Cause Diagnosis Framework

Before applying fixes, diagnose the specific failure mode. This framework was developed from empirical analysis of an Apple Silicon MacBook kept permanently on AC, where the device that kept dropping off the bus was a bus-powered USB 1.1 audio-class microphone with no serial number — the most fragile class of USB peripheral across sleep/wake, and so the worst case these fixes are tuned for. Identify your own device with the ioreg command below rather than by vendor/product ID; nothing here needs one.

DarkWake Cycling

macOS performs frequent DarkWake (partial maintenance wake) cycles — typically every 15 minutes overnight. During DarkWake:

  • CPU wakes for Power Nap, network keepalive, Siri
  • USB bus is partially powered but devices aren't fully re-enumerated
  • USB 1.1 Full Speed devices lack Link Power Management (LPM) and can't negotiate graceful resume
  • After multiple cycles, the XHCI controller drops the device from the IO registry

Diagnostic command — check sleep/wake history:

pmset -g log | grep -E "Sleep |Wake |DarkWake" | tail -30

Read the full file on GitHub · 340 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. 2d ago Changed cb90580b7d1a
  2. 11d ago First seen · 340 lines · 33 tokens per session scan B d63e765d5946

Subscribe to this mod's changes

macbook-desktop-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository terrylica/cc-skills (72 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 3,373 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 2 findings (asks for root, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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