thelobbi Monitor Tool
The Monitor tool spawns a background watcher and streams its events into the conversation as new transcript messages. Each event lands immediately and Claude reacts to it — no polling loop, no holding the turn open with a sleep.
Available since v2.1.98.
What It Does
Bash (sleep loop, polling) Monitor tool
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while true; do # Claude spawns a watcher
check_ci_status # Watcher runs in background
sleep 30 # Each event → new message
done # Claude reacts immediately
The conversation stays open. Events arrive asynchronously. Claude processes each one and decides whether to act.
Common Use Cases
Tail a log file
> Tail server.log in the background and tell me the moment a 5xx shows up
Claude spawns a watcher on server.log. Each new log line arrives as a transcript message. When a 5xx pattern matches, Claude reacts immediately — describe the error, suggest a fix, or apply one automatically.
Watch CI on a PR
> Watch CI on my current branch and fix any failures as they come in
Claude monitors the CI status. When a check fails, it reads the failure output, writes a fix, and pushes — all without you sitting at the terminal.
Auto-fix dev server crashes
> Start the dev server in the background, watch for crashes, and restart and fix when it crashes
Claude starts the server, monitors its output, and when a crash appears, reads the traceback, patches the code, and restarts.
Training run progress
> Kick off training and summarize progress every epoch without keeping the session idle
Claude monitors training output and sends epoch summaries as events arrive.
/loop Self-Pacing
/loop now self-paces: if you omit the interval, Claude picks the next tick based on what it's waiting for. When the Monitor tool is available, Claude reaches for it instead of polling.
> /loop check CI on my PR
Claude will:
- Use the Monitor tool to watch CI (not poll with sleep)
- React the moment a result arrives
- Schedule the next check only if the Monitor can't be used
Explicit interval (still works)
> /loop --interval 60 run the dependency audit
Dynamic (recommended)
> /loop check CI on my PR
Pairing Monitor with PreToolUse hooks
If you want to gate what Monitor can watch (e.g., only internal hosts):
{
"hooks": {
"PreToolUse": [{
"hooks": [{
"if": "Monitor(*)",
"type": "command",
"command": ".claude/hooks/monitor-allowlist.sh"
}]
}]
}
}
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# monitor-allowlist.sh — only allow monitoring local files and localhost
set -euo pipefail
INPUT=$(cat)
TARGET=$(echo "$INPUT" | jq -r '.tool_input.target // ""')
case "$TARGET" in
*.log|localhost:*|/tmp/*)
echo '{"decision": "approve"}'
;;
*)
jq -n --arg t "$TARGET" '{"decision":"block","reason":("Monitor target not allowed: "+$t)}'
;;
esac
Decision: Monitor vs Bash Loop vs ScheduleWakeup
| Scenario | Best Tool |
|---|---|
| React to log events in real time | Monitor tool |
| Wait for a known-duration process (8-min build) | ScheduleWakeup (~270s, stays in cache) |
| Poll a REST endpoint every minute | Monitor tool (wrap in a watcher script) |
| Long-idle background check (>30 min) | ScheduleWakeup (1200s+) |
| One-shot process check on demand | Bash |
Available in
- CLI (v2.1.98+)
- Desktop app
- Not available in
-p(print/pipe) headless mode