process-watch

What This Skill Does

The process-watch skill is a powerful, terminal-grade diagnostic tool designed for OpenClaw users who need granular visibility into their operating system's internal state. While standard utilities like top or taskmgr offer a surface-level view, this skill provides a centralized interface for investigating resource bottlenecks, network anomalies, and zombie processes. It allows you to monitor CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network socket activity in real-time. Whether you are debugging a runaway microservice, identifying hidden processes consuming bandwidth, or checking which application is holding a specific port open, process-watch streamlines the troubleshooting workflow.

Installation

To integrate this utility into your OpenClaw agent, execute the following command in your terminal or within the agent environment:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/dbhurley/process-watch

Once installed, the skill becomes available as a command-line tool accessible via the process-watch namespace, allowing your AI agent to query system metrics and execute management tasks on your behalf.

Use Cases

• Troubleshooting Performance Lag: Quickly identify which background process is spiking CPU usage during heavy workloads.
• Network Auditing: Detect suspicious processes listening on unauthorized ports or diagnose connectivity issues by inspecting active network handles.
• Resource Cleanup: Automate the termination of unresponsive applications or bulk-kill processes matching specific patterns.
• Continuous Monitoring: Utilize the watch mode to trigger proactive alerts when your machine hits memory or CPU thresholds.

Example Prompts

1. "OpenClaw, find out what is currently consuming the most memory on my system and give me a summary of its open files."
2. "I am getting a port conflict error. Can you check what is using port 3000 and kill that process for me?"
3. "Start a background watch on my system; if any process uses more than 80% CPU, please notify me immediately."

Tips & Limitations

• Platform Variability: While Linux and macOS benefit from deep introspection (including lsof-like capabilities), the Windows implementation is currently limited to basic process listing. Always verify the platform-specific limitations before running complex network diagnostics.
• Permissions: Some commands, particularly those involving killing system processes or accessing restricted file handles, may require administrator or root-level permissions. Ensure your OpenClaw environment is configured with appropriate user privileges.
• Precision: Use the --limit flag when running list or top commands to avoid overwhelming the chat interface with excessive text logs when the system is under heavy load.