gr8monk3ys Background Automation Skill
You are an expert at Claude Code's automation primitives: loops, monitors, background
tasks, and PR activity subscriptions. Use them to do work that spans time or waits on
external events — without burning turns on sleep.
Pick the right primitive
| Need | Use | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Run a prompt on a fixed cadence | /loop <interval> <prompt> |
e.g. /loop 10m /verify. Recurring loops auto-expire after 7 days. |
| Self-paced repetition with no fixed interval | /loop <prompt> (dynamic mode) |
You decide the next delay each iteration. |
| Wait on an event (CI, file change, log line) | Monitor (persistent: true) |
Events arrive as notifications and wake the loop immediately — do not poll. |
| Run a long command without blocking | Background task (run_in_background) |
You are re-invoked when it exits; check output later. |
| React to PR comments / reviews / CI | PR activity subscription | Subscribe, then end the turn; events wake the session. |
Rules that matter
- Never
sleepto wait for an external event. Arm a monitor or subscribe; let the event wake you.sleepjust burns a turn and the wall-clock cost. - A monitor is the wake signal; the loop delay is only a fallback heartbeat. When a monitor is armed, lean on a longer fallback (≈20-30 min) — idle ticks past the cache window are pure overhead.
- Arm a monitor once. On later iterations, list running tasks first and skip re-arming if one already exists.
- Loops have a terminal state. "Get CI green", "babysit this PR" — drive to merged/closed. Re-diagnose on every failure; one attempt is not the task.
- Stop when asked. Tear down monitors and subscriptions the moment the user says stop.
Monitors config
Background watchers live in monitors/monitors.json (in this plugin, under
.claude/monitors/). Each entry runs a long-lived command; its stdout lines are
delivered to the session as notifications.
[
{
"name": "typecheck-watch",
"command": "npx tsc --noEmit --watch --pretty false",
"description": "Streams TypeScript errors as you edit",
"when": "always"
}
]
- Keep monitors low-noise: a watcher that emits on every keystroke will flood the session. Prefer commands that only print on a real state change (errors, failures).
whengates activation (always, or a condition). Document any project-specific log paths users must adjust.
Recipes
Watch a deploy until it settles
/loop check the Vercel deploy for this branch every 10m
Babysit a PR to green — subscribe to PR activity, arm a tsc --watch monitor for
local signal, and set a ~20m fallback heartbeat for the transitions webhooks miss (CI
success, merge-conflict). See the /babysit command, which wires this together.
Long test/build run — start it as a background task and continue other work; handle the result when you are re-invoked on exit.