background-processes

Instructions for running servers, file watchers, and other long-lived development processes without blocking the coding workflow. They cover starting processes in the background, checking that they are running, reading logs, and stopping them.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when starting development servers, watch commands, or other processes that must continue running while you work.
Why use it?
It prevents development commands that keep running from hanging the agent or hiding startup failures.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/zfinix/aster/background-processes
Any agent
npx skills add Zfinix/aster --skill background-processes
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Zfinix/aster

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 41 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 377 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. 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 $0.00041 $0.00377
Opus 5 $0.00020 $0.00188
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00075
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00038

Measured 2d ago against content hash dd4f85a7a660, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

background-processes scanned grade A with 1 finding 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

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

`for i in $(seq 1 40); do curl -s localhost:3000 >/dev/null && echo UP && break; sleep 0.5; done`
crates/aster-skills/optional-skills/background-processes/SKILL.md · 26 lines

What it actually says

Background processes

  1. Never run a server in the foreground of a tool call. It runs until the timeout kills it and the round is wasted. Background it and detach: bash -lc "nohup bun run dev > /tmp/dev.log 2>&1 & echo started".
  2. Logs go to a file, not the pipe. A backgrounded process writing to the pipe keeps the call alive. Redirect to /tmp/<name>.log, then read the log with tail -20 /tmp/<name>.log in a later call.
  3. Wait by polling the port, never by sleeping. for i in $(seq 1 40); do curl -s localhost:3000 >/dev/null && echo UP && break; sleep 0.5; done
  4. Verify it actually started. After the poll, check the log tail for the startup line or errors: tail -5 /tmp/dev.log. A backgrounded crash looks identical to success until you look.
  5. Kill by pattern when done or when restarting. pkill -f "bun run dev" || true before starting a second instance; two servers on one port is a classic wasted hour.
  6. One-shot beats long-lived when possible. Prefer bun run build plus a static check over starting a dev server, and cargo test over cargo watch. Reach for a background server only when the task needs a live process.
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 First seen · 26 lines · 41 tokens per session scan A dd4f85a7a660

Subscribe to this mod's changes

background-processes is a skill published in the GitHub repository Zfinix/aster (40 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 41 tokens to every session and 377 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (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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