ProcMon

What This Skill Does

The ProcMon skill is a powerful observability tool designed for the OpenClaw AI agent to interface with the host operating system's process management subsystem. By leveraging standard system utilities like ps, pstree, and ss, ProcMon provides a real-time window into the operational state of the machine. It allows the agent to move beyond static commands by enabling structured data collection, such as identifying runaway CPU processes, tracking memory leaks, mapping process inheritance trees, and monitoring network-bound services. Whether you are debugging a deployment, checking for zombie process accumulation, or simply maintaining system health, ProcMon acts as the diagnostic layer that informs the agent's decision-making process.

Installation

To install this skill, use the ClawHub registry command in your OpenClaw terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/bytesagain3/procmon

Ensure that the host system has ps installed. For advanced functionality like tree views and port auditing, ensure pstree and ss (or netstat) are available in the system path. The skill will gracefully handle the absence of optional dependencies, though some commands may result in a 'not implemented' status if specific binaries are missing.

Use Cases

1. System Performance Auditing: Quickly identify which processes are consuming excessive memory or CPU cycles using the heavy command.
2. Production Incident Response: When a service stops responding, the agent can use watch or log to capture snapshot data and log files, allowing for post-mortem analysis of resource spikes.
3. Network Troubleshooting: Use the ports command to determine which processes are bound to specific listening ports, which is vital for resolving 'port already in use' errors.
4. Zombie Cleanup: Identify and report defunct processes that are consuming PID space or indicating child process mismanagement.

Example Prompts

1. "ProcMon, can you show me the top memory-heavy processes right now and see if any nginx processes are hung?"
2. "I'm seeing high CPU usage. Use the ProcMon watch command on the primary python process for 10 seconds to see if the spikes are consistent."
3. "List all processes currently listening on network ports and tell me which ones are associated with active PID trees."

Tips & Limitations

• Permissions: ProcMon operates with the permissions of the OpenClaw agent. If you need to view processes owned by other users or the root system, ensure the agent process has appropriate sudo privileges or is running as a user with sufficient monitoring rights.
• Logging: The log command writes to ~/.procmon/. Ensure the agent has write access to this directory.
• Performance: While watch is excellent for real-time monitoring, frequent requests across a large number of processes may cause minor load spikes; use the tool judiciously in production environments.