Argus JVM Harness
A thin Claude Code wrapper around argus harness <pid>. The CLI does the work; this skill picks the right invocation, bootstraps the CLI when needed, and summarises the resulting session in natural language.
When to use
The user says any of: "monitor my JVM", "watch this process", "check why GC keeps spiking", "is there a leak in pid X", "tune the JVM at ", "harness", or anything implying a time-window health check rather than a single-snapshot one. For one-shot questions ("how does my heap look right now?"), prefer argus doctor <pid> instead.
Required input
A target PID. If the user hasn't given one, ask them or run argus ps first to list candidates.
Flow
Locate the CLI. Run command -v argus. If absent, install it once with the official installer (no flags, public host):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rlaope/Argus/master/install.sh | bash
then re-resolve PATH with source ~/.zshrc or use the absolute path ~/.argus/bin/argus.
Pick a profile.
--profile=quick (2 s tick, default 1 min): use for fast spot-checks and demos.--profile=deep (10 s tick, default 30 min): default for real investigations.
The user's words usually decide: "quick look" → quick; "monitor for 10 minutes / for a while / overnight" → deep.
Run with a JSON sink so the model can read findings programmatically:
argus harness <pid> --profile=deep --duration=<user-specified-or-30m> --out=/tmp/argus-harness.json --format=json
Stream stdout to the user — the live tick line is informative — but use the JSON file as the source of truth for the summary.
Summarise. After the command exits, read /tmp/argus-harness.json and report:
- Exit-code verdict (0 healthy / 1 warnings / 2 critical).
- Each finding's
severity, title, and detail, ordered as the JSON returns them (engine already sorted by severity).
- The
hits count for any finding that fired more than once — that is the harness's signal of a persistent problem versus a transient spike.
- The deduplicated
suggestedFlags across all findings, in a single block the user can paste into their JVM args.
- Concrete next-step CLI commands the user can run (the JSON's
recommendations array already contains them).
Do not modify the JVM. This skill is observation + recommendation only. Never invoke argus vmset, argus gcrun, argus heapdump, or argus jfr start automatically. If the recommendations suggest one of those, surface it as a suggestion and let the user run it.
Constraints
- The harness command exits with code 1 (warnings) or 2 (critical). Treat that as a signal, not an error — a non-zero exit on a healthy harness run indicates the JVM had real problems, which is the whole point.
- Default
--duration from the profile if the user did not specify one. Don't pick numbers out of thin air.
- The JSON document is stable across versions; rely on
findings[].severity, findings[].title, findings[].detail, findings[].recommendations[], findings[].suggestedFlags[], and counts.{critical,warning,info}.
Reference
1---2name: argus-jvm-harness3description: Continuous JVM monitoring + optimization + troubleshooting harness on top of the Argus CLI. Use when the user wants to watch a running JVM for trouble (GC regression, heap leak, thread growth, pause-time spikes) over a window of time and get a single severity-ranked report with recommended JVM flags. Bootstraps the Argus CLI via the official installer when it is not already on PATH.4license: MIT5---67# Argus JVM Harness89A thin Claude Code wrapper around `argus harness <pid>`. The CLI does the work; this skill picks the right invocation, bootstraps the CLI when needed, and summarises the resulting session in natural language.1011## When to use1213The user says any of: "monitor my JVM", "watch this process", "check why GC keeps spiking", "is there a leak in pid X", "tune the JVM at <pid>", "harness", or anything implying a *time-window* health check rather than a single-snapshot one. For one-shot questions ("how does my heap look right now?"), prefer `argus doctor <pid>` instead.1415## Required input1617A target PID. If the user hasn't given one, ask them or run `argus ps` first to list candidates.1819## Flow20211. **Locate the CLI.** Run `command -v argus`. If absent, install it once with the official installer (no flags, public host):22 ```bash23 curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rlaope/Argus/master/install.sh | bash24 ```25 then re-resolve PATH with `source ~/.zshrc` or use the absolute path `~/.argus/bin/argus`.26272. **Pick a profile.**28 - `--profile=quick` (2 s tick, default 1 min): use for fast spot-checks and demos.29 - `--profile=deep` (10 s tick, default 30 min): default for real investigations.30 The user's words usually decide: "quick look" → quick; "monitor for 10 minutes / for a while / overnight" → deep.31323. **Run with a JSON sink** so the model can read findings programmatically:33 ```bash34 argus harness <pid> --profile=deep --duration=<user-specified-or-30m> --out=/tmp/argus-harness.json --format=json35 ```36 Stream stdout to the user — the live tick line is informative — but use the JSON file as the source of truth for the summary.37384. **Summarise.** After the command exits, read `/tmp/argus-harness.json` and report:39 - Exit-code verdict (0 healthy / 1 warnings / 2 critical).40 - Each finding's `severity`, `title`, and `detail`, ordered as the JSON returns them (engine already sorted by severity).41 - The `hits` count for any finding that fired more than once — that is the harness's signal of a *persistent* problem versus a transient spike.42 - The deduplicated `suggestedFlags` across all findings, in a single block the user can paste into their JVM args.43 - Concrete next-step CLI commands the user can run (the JSON's `recommendations` array already contains them).44455. **Do not modify the JVM.** This skill is observation + recommendation only. Never invoke `argus vmset`, `argus gcrun`, `argus heapdump`, or `argus jfr start` automatically. If the recommendations suggest one of those, surface it as a suggestion and let the user run it.4647## Constraints4849- The harness command exits with code 1 (warnings) or 2 (critical). Treat that as a *signal*, not an error — a non-zero exit on a healthy harness run indicates the JVM had real problems, which is the whole point.50- Default `--duration` from the profile if the user did not specify one. Don't pick numbers out of thin air.51- The JSON document is stable across versions; rely on `findings[].severity`, `findings[].title`, `findings[].detail`, `findings[].recommendations[]`, `findings[].suggestedFlags[]`, and `counts.{critical,warning,info}`.5253## Reference5455- CLI usage: `argus harness --help`56- Full reference: <https://github.com/rlaope/Argus/blob/master/docs/harness.md>57- Underlying rule set: 12 doctor health rules + 4 trend rules (heap-leak regression, GC overhead trend, thread growth, GC pause regression).
rlaope