AI Process Monitoring
Inspect the live child processes behind a terminal tab.
Availability
Partially implemented in stable. Read the limits below before relying on this workflow.
Reviewed against stable v0.5.1. Rust candidate additions are labeled separately. Release status.
The pain this solves
- A terminal shell can launch several children whose CPU or memory use is hard to attribute by sight.
- A live process snapshot is useful for investigation but does not answer historical resource questions.
What ships with it
- On-demand process snapshots include PID, parent PID, process name, CPU, and resident memory.
- The sampler follows every descendant of the shell PID, including non-AI commands.
- Polling is tied to the hover card and the snapshot is cleared when monitoring stops.
Questions this answers
- How much CPU does Claude Code use?
- Monitor AI agent memory usage in terminal
- Which AI coding tool is using the most resources?
- How to track process stats for AI CLI tools?
How it works
The hover-card monitor polls the macOS process list for descendants of a tab’s shell PID. Each snapshot includes process name, PID, parent PID, CPU percentage, and resident memory.
The snapshot covers the shell’s descendant tree, not only recognized AI processes. A build tool, language server, or other child process can appear alongside an agent.
Monitoring is on demand while the hover card is visible. The monitor clears its current snapshot when stopped; this code path does not create a historical resource-usage series for later session review.
Why it matters
A process tree tied to a terminal shell can help explain which child process is consuming CPU or memory. Chau7 presents a live snapshot for inspection; it does not claim historical per-agent resource analytics.
Frequently asked questions
Are the metrics limited to AI agents?
No. The monitor samples all descendants of the tab shell, so non-AI child processes can appear too.
Does Chau7 keep historical CPU and memory charts?
No. This monitor provides on-demand snapshots while the hover card is visible; it does not persist a time series of these process metrics.
When does polling run?
The process monitor is started for the hover card and stopped when it is no longer needed. The source does not make a universal zero-overhead or fixed polling-cost guarantee.