What's Running

io.github.stcmainPublished by GitHub account stcmainv0.1.6Updated Oct 24, 2026

Live OS ground truth for agents: running agent sessions, listening ports, daemons, system load.

VerifiedSTDIODesktop onlyDeveloper ToolsSecurity & Monitoring

Overview

AI-generated overview

Read-only MCP server that reports what is actually running on the local machine: live agent sessions, listening ports, daemons and system load.

What you can do
  • Take a full snapshot of the machine's live state in one call, suited to session start.
  • List running agent processes with pid, uptime, working directory and whether they are terminal-attached or detached.
  • List every TCP listening socket together with the process that owns it.
  • List loaded persistent services via launchctl on macOS or systemd user services on Linux, with an optional label filter.
  • Report load average, uptime and free space on the root disk.
When to use it
Useful when several coding-agent sessions run on one machine and an assistant needs to check whether a service, daemon or sibling agent is really alive instead of trusting stale transcripts or memory. Also handy for a quick read-only health check of ports and system load at the start of a session.
Requirements
Runs as a local stdio process, installed via npx or a Claude Desktop bundle, or built from source with Node.js. macOS is the primary platform; Linux is best-effort. Optional environment variable WR_AGENT_PATTERNS sets which process-name substrings count as agent sessions. No account, API key or network access is needed.
Before you install
The server deliberately exposes local machine details to the model: process names, pids, working directories and listening ports. Do not attach it to an untrusted client. It is read-only and runs fixed commands without a shell, but it does read OS state, so treat its output as sensitive. The README also advertises separate paid kits; the server itself is free and has no telemetry.

Installation

In SourceWeft

  1. Open What's Running in the dashboard and add it to a workspace.
  2. Enable the server for the chats that should use its tools.

Desktop only via STDIO. STDIO servers start a local process, so they need the SourceWeft desktop host.

Other MCP clients

Follow the launch instructions in the repository.

README

whats-running-mcp

[npm] [license] [Glama]

Ground truth for agent fleets. An MCP server that tells your AI agent what is actually running on the machine — live agent sessions, listening TCP ports, loaded daemons, system load — read straight from the OS (ps / lsof / launchctl / df), never from docs, transcripts, or memory files.

Why

If you run more than one coding-agent session (Claude Code, Codex, Aider…), you've seen this failure mode: an agent "health-checks" a server that died weeks ago, or confidently reports a daemon as live because an old transcript said so. Model memory is a cache with no invalidation. The OS is the source of truth.

This server started as a shell script (whats-running) I wrote after my own fleet of Claude Code sessions kept reporting stale state as live. Wrapping it in MCP means every session grounds itself the same way, automatically.

Tools

ToolWhat it answers
whats_runningFull snapshot in one call — use at session start
agent_sessionsWhich agent processes are live? Terminal-attached vs detached/orphan, with pid, uptime, and working directory
listening_portsIs service X actually up? Every TCP LISTEN socket with owning process
daemonsWhat persistent services are loaded? launchctl (macOS, non-Apple) or systemd user services (Linux), with optional label filter
system_statsLoad average, uptime, root-disk free space

Install

Claude Desktop (one-click, no terminal): download the latest whats-running-mcp-<version>.dxt from Releases and open it with Claude Desktop (double-click, or Settings → Extensions → Install Extension…). The server and its dependencies ship inside the bundle — no npm, no Node install.

Register with Claude Code (available in every session):

bash
claude mcp add --scope user whats-running -- npx -y whats-running-mcp

Or in any MCP client config:

json
{  "mcpServers": {    "whats-running": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "whats-running-mcp"]    }  }}
From source
bash
git clone https://github.com/stcmain/whats-running-mcp.gitcd whats-running-mcpnpm install && npm run build# then point your client at node /path/to/whats-running-mcp/dist/index.js

Published as whats-running-mcp on npm and as io.github.stcmain/whats-running-mcp in the MCP Registry.

Configuration

Env varDefaultPurpose
WR_AGENT_PATTERNSclaude,codex,aider,cursor-agent,copilot,gooseComma-separated substrings that mark a process as an "agent" in agent_sessions

Design notes

  • Read-only by construction. Every command is a fixed binary with fixed flags via execFile — no shell, and nothing derived from model input is ever executed. The only model-controlled inputs are a boolean and a substring filter applied in-process.
  • Local information disclosure is the point. The model sees process names, pids, working directories, and ports of your own machine. Don't attach this server to an untrusted client.
  • Best-effort, never blocking. Commands time out at 10s and degrade to empty results rather than erroring the whole snapshot.

Platform: macOS first (my daily driver), Linux best-effort (systemd --user in place of launchctl).

Related free tools

Same idea — read-only, MIT, no telemetry — pointed at different blind spots:

  • whats-loaded-mcp — what is consuming your agent's context before a session starts: skill descriptions ranked by token cost, skills installed more than once, CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md sizes including what their imports pull in. npx -y whats-loaded-mcp
  • whats-inherited-mcp — what a checkout tells your agent to do before you run it: instruction files, commands wired to auto-run, declared MCP servers, shipped skills. Repo strings come back labelled as data, not instructions. npx -y whats-inherited-mcp
  • whats-allowed-mcp — what your agent can do without asking you: every settings file that contributes permission rules, which one wins, what runs unattended, and the rules your client accepts and then ignores. npx -y whats-allowed-mcp

Who makes this

Built by Shift The Culture — we run a one-person company on AI agents and ship the tooling we needed ourselves. This server is free and MIT-licensed, no strings.

This server is the free, standalone piece of a larger multi-agent setup. The rest of that tooling is paid:

  • Agent Fleet Ops Kit ($29) — the other failure modes of running three or four agents on one box: two sessions editing the same checkout, a dev server nobody owns (so the agent tests a different app than it edits), and MCP servers leaked from crashed sessions that hold ports and RAM for weeks. Prefer PayPal? Same kit on Payhip.
  • Agent Reliability Kit ($29) — a Stop hook and two CLIs that block a turn when an agent claims "done" against a repo, URL, or build that was never actually checked. Prefer PayPal? Same kit on Payhip.

The server above stays free and MIT either way — it has no upsell in it, no telemetry, and no dependency on the paid kits.

Sponsors

This server is MIT and stays MIT. There is no pro edition, no telemetry, and nothing held back from the free build. Sponsorship is how the maintenance gets paid for without any of that changing.

No sponsors yet — the first slot is open. Company sponsors get their name or logo in this section, in the two sibling servers, and on the sponsor page. Tiers, exactly what the placement is, and what it explicitly does not buy: https://shifttheculture.media/sponsor

Individuals: https://paypal.me/ShiftTheCultureLLC — any amount, no perks, no tier.

License

MIT © Zachary Pampu

Source: README.md at commit 3d43058

Tools

0
SourceWeft has not started this package in its sandbox yet, so its tools are not known.

Version history

1
  1. v0.1.6LatestSep 16, 2026

Score

50% of the applicable checks met

How complete this listing is, computed from the registry entry, the endpoint and public sources. Not a rating of the server and not a statement that it is safe or working today: reachability is a dated check, and no installs or reviews go into the score.

  • Reached in the last 30 days25 pts

    Keep the endpoint answering the MCP handshake; SourceWeft probes it every 30 days.

  • Auth declared10 pts

    Declare the credential headers in the registry entry, or keep the endpoint answering the probe so its auth can be classified.

  • Tools listed15 pts

    Answer tools/list without a credential, or ship a package that starts in a sandbox without one.

  • DescriptionRequired15 pts
  • Logo10 pts
  • Documentation15 pts
  • License10 pts