Burrow System Tools

Burrow system tools

Burrow runs a local MCP server over the user's Mac: live + historical system state (read-only) and gated maintenance. The governing habit is diagnose first — when a question is about this machine, or you spot a system symptom mid-task, reach for the read-only tools, name the cause, then propose a fix. Read-only tools never change anything, so there's no reason to hesitate.

Diagnose first (read-only — always safe)

• burrow_doctor — one-call health sweep: engine present, Full Disk Access, memory pressure, disk headroom, SMART disk health, Time Machine backup age, recent decode errors. Start here for any vague "something's wrong / is my Mac healthy?" — it tells you which area to drill into. It does not report SIP / Gatekeeper / FileVault / firewall over MCP (only the GUI fills those in), so for "is my Mac secure?" read them from the shell rather than claiming the tool checked them.
• burrow_snapshot — current vitals (CPU, memory, disk, network, temperature, top processes, a 0–100 health score). For "what's happening right now".
• burrow_top_processes — top CPU right now. For "what's using my CPU / why is it hot or loud?"
• burrow_process_usage — ranks over a window by cpu_time / peak_cpu / avg_cpu / peak_mem. Prefer this for "all day / since this morning / what's draining my battery?"
• burrow_history / burrow_diff — a trend over time, or what changed since a point ("it got slow in the last hour").
• burrow_disk_forecast — "when will my disk fill up?" (pointless once the disk is already full — go straight to analyze). burrow_analyze <path> — "what's eating space in <folder>?" Supports depth (descend into the largest subdirectories in one call), limit, and min_size — e.g. depth: 2, min_size: 104857600 maps hotspots without a call per directory. Scanning a home folder or ~/Library can take minutes: pass the most specific path you can.
• burrow_ports — "what's listening / what's on port 3000?" (pid + owner).
• burrow_cleanup_history / burrow_deleted_files — what Burrow has cleaned, and exactly which files it removed.
• burrow_list_apps — installed apps + the exact names uninstall accepts (call this before any uninstall). burrow_info — whether Burrow is even recording data (use when results look empty or stale).
• Reclaim candidates (read-only, report-only — they find things worth deleting but never delete): burrow_dupes paths (duplicate files), burrow_photos path (visually near-duplicate images), burrow_orphans path (files belonging to no installed app), burrow_sentinel (apps sitting in the Trash whose leftovers you could sweep), burrow_slim_check binary (how much thinning a fat binary would reclaim), burrow_net (which app is moving bytes right now), burrow_rules_dryrun dir (what a community rules directory would target).
• burrow_anomalies — processes whose last-24h CPU has regressed against their own 14-day baseline. Reach for it when the user says something feels off but nothing looks obviously high: this is per-process, so a program that always sits at 40% isn't flagged and one that went 2% → 15% is.
• burrow_agent_audit — what agents (including you, earlier) have already run through this server: the tool, the exact arguments, dry-run or real, and the outcome. Check it before repeating a cleanup, and whenever you're not sure a call went through.

Then act (gated — preview by default)

Maintenance tools mutate the system. They run dry-run by default; a real run needs confirm: true and the user's Settings opt-in, so a confirmed call may still be refused and reported as blocked. Always show the dry-run preview and get the user's explicit go before passing confirm: true — never assume a real run will execute.

• burrow_clean / burrow_optimize — remove caches/logs/junk / run safe maintenance. The clean scan can take minutes on a full disk; a result with timed_out: true means the run was killed, not that nothing needed cleaning.
• burrow_uninstall — remove apps + leftovers (to Trash unless permanent; resolve names via burrow_list_apps first; it aborts unless the matcher hits exactly the apps you named).
• burrow_purge / burrow_installer — preview-only over MCP (dev build artifacts / leftover installers); the real run is interactive in the app.

Resources, prompts, and long scans

Burrow also exposes its read-only answers as resources, which you can attach instead of re-calling a tool: burrow://doctor, burrow://snapshot/latest, burrow://ports, burrow://info, burrow://forecast/disk, burrow://cleanup/history, burrow://cleanup/deleted-files, burrow://agent-audit, burrow://anomalies, burrow://report/weekly, plus burrow://history/{minutes}, burrow://processes/{metric} and burrow://report/{days}. Each read says how long it stays fresh — five seconds for a live snapshot, a minute for a digest — so re-read rather than trusting a minutes-old attachment.

Its prompts (diagnose_slow_mac, reclaim_disk_space, explain_last_cleanup, investigate_process, pre_uninstall_check) encode the tool orderings that avoid wrong answers — worth offering when the user's request matches one.

Slow scans (burrow_analyze on a big folder, burrow_clean, burrow_dupes) may come back as a task handle instead of a result if your client supports the tasks extension. Poll tasks/get until it reaches a terminal status rather than assuming the call failed.

Be proactive

The biggest win is catching problems the user hasn't mentioned. If, mid-task, you hit or notice a system symptom — a build failing because the disk is nearly full, a process pinning the CPU, a port already in use — pause, run the relevant read-only tool, tell the user what you found, and offer the fix. That's the behaviour to lean into; don't wait to be asked.

Patterns

• Low on disk (the most common real emergency) → burrow_analyze with depth: 2 on the suspect folder (largest user dirs first; skip the forecast if the disk is already full) → burrow_dupes / burrow_photos / burrow_orphans / burrow_sentinel for reclaim candidates → burrow_clean preview → burrow_purge / burrow_installer previews. If user folders don't account for the usage, check APFS local snapshots (tmutil listlocalsnapshots /) and purgeable space — Burrow doesn't report those yet, so shell out for that piece.
• Slow / hot / loud → burrow_doctor → burrow_top_processes (now) or burrow_process_usage (over time) → name the culprit → offer a clean/optimize preview if relevant.
• "Feels off" but nothing looks high → burrow_anomalies.
• "Did that cleanup actually run?" → burrow_agent_audit.
• What's listening → burrow_ports. For SIP / FileVault / firewall, use the shell — burrow_doctor doesn't cover them over MCP.
• Empty or stale results → burrow_info to confirm Burrow is recording.

Full per-tool params + the safety model live in the Burrow repo at docs/agent-tools.md.