kairos-lite

Proactive monitoring and briefing agent. Runs between sessions via cron + claude -p, checks GitHub (PRs, CI, issues, dependabot), local repo state (stale branches, uncommitted changes), and toolkit health (hook errors, stale memories, state files). Produces structured briefings injected at session start.

When to invoke

• User says "morning briefing", "what happened", "project status", "check notifications", "health check", "kairos"
• Invoked automatically by cron every 4 hours during business hours (quick scan — Category A only)
• Nightly deep scan at 2:30 AM (all categories)

Instructions

When invoked interactively, read skills/kairos-lite/monitor-prompt.md and execute its phases directly. The prompt is self-contained — it describes the full monitoring cycle including check categories, output format, and file paths.

For cron invocation: the monitor prompt is passed directly to claude -p and runs as a standalone headless session with no CLAUDE.md, no hooks, no project context. All instructions are embedded in the prompt.

Requires CLAUDE_KAIROS_ENABLED=true environment variable. If not set, exit silently.

Monitoring Categories

Category A — Action Required (quick and deep scans):

• PRs assigned to @me with open state
• Review requests pending for @me
• CI failures on watched branches
• Dependabot security alerts (critical and high severity)

Category B — FYI (deep scan only):

• New issues opened since last check
• Dependency updates available (non-security)
• Stale branches (> 7 days since last commit)
• Uncommitted changes on feature branches

Category C — Toolkit Health (deep scan only):

• Hook error rate from learning.db
• Stale memory files (> 14 days since last update)
• ADR backlog count (local adr/ directory)
• State file accumulation in ~/.claude/state/

Phases

1. LOAD CONFIG — Read ~/.claude/config/kairos.json for watched repos, branches, and thresholds. Determine scan mode from KAIROS_MODE env var.
2. GITHUB CHECKS — Run gh queries in parallel. Category A always; Category B added for deep scans.
3. REPO CHECKS — Check local repo state: stale branches, uncommitted changes. Deep scan only.
4. TOOLKIT HEALTH — Query learning.db for hook error rates, scan memory file mtimes, count state directory files. Deep scan only.
5. COMPILE BRIEFING — Aggregate findings into structured sections. Empty categories get explicit "all clear" entries.
6. WRITE OUTPUT — Write briefing atomically (write to .tmp, then rename) to ~/.claude/state/briefing-{project-hash}-{date}.md.

Output

Briefing written to ~/.claude/state/briefing-{project-hash}-{date}.md.

The project hash uses the same encoding as ~/.claude/projects/ directory names (URL-encode the project path, replace / with -).

Config

Read from ~/.claude/config/kairos.json. Example structure:

{
  "repos": [
    {"owner": "notque", "repo": "claude-code-toolkit", "branches": ["main"]}
  ],
  "thresholds": {
    "stale_branch_days": 7,
    "stale_memory_days": 14,
    "state_file_warn_count": 50
  }
}

Quick vs Deep scan

Mode	Trigger	Categories	Frequency
Quick	Default / every 4 hours business hours	A only	Every 4h (8 AM–6 PM)
Deep	KAIROS_MODE=deep / nightly	A + B + C	2:30 AM nightly

Set KAIROS_MODE=deep to force a deep scan interactively.

Opt-in requirement

CLAUDE_KAIROS_ENABLED=true must be set in the environment. If absent, the skill exits 0 silently — no output, no error. This prevents accidental runs during toolkit development.

Cost estimate

~$0.04 per quick run (Category A only, ~8-12K input tokens at Sonnet pricing). ~$0.08 per deep run (all categories, ~18-25K input tokens). ~$14/year for full automated operation (4h quick + nightly deep, 5-day business week).

Cron setup

Use crontab-manager.py (not raw crontab -e) to install both schedules.

# Quick scan every 4 hours, 8 AM–6 PM business hours
python3 ~/.claude/scripts/crontab-manager.py add \
  --tag "kairos-quick" \
  --schedule "0 8,12,16 * * 1-5" \
  --command "CLAUDE_KAIROS_ENABLED=true /home/feedgen/claude-code-toolkit/scripts/kairos-cron.sh >> /home/feedgen/claude-code-toolkit/cron-logs/kairos/quick.log 2>&1"

# Deep scan nightly at 2:30 AM
python3 ~/.claude/scripts/crontab-manager.py add \
  --tag "kairos-deep" \
  --schedule "30 2 * * *" \
  --command "CLAUDE_KAIROS_ENABLED=true KAIROS_MODE=deep /home/feedgen/claude-code-toolkit/scripts/kairos-cron.sh >> /home/feedgen/claude-code-toolkit/cron-logs/kairos/deep.log 2>&1"

# Verify
python3 ~/.claude/scripts/crontab-manager.py verify --tag kairos-quick
python3 ~/.claude/scripts/crontab-manager.py verify --tag kairos-deep

Testing

# Verify opt-in guard (should exit silently)
./scripts/kairos-cron.sh
echo "Exit: $?"

# Quick scan dry-run
CLAUDE_KAIROS_ENABLED=true ./scripts/kairos-cron.sh --dry-run

# Deep scan dry-run
CLAUDE_KAIROS_ENABLED=true KAIROS_MODE=deep ./scripts/kairos-cron.sh --dry-run

# Check output
ls ~/.claude/state/briefing-*.md | tail -1 | xargs cat

# Interactive invocation (reads monitor-prompt.md and executes directly)
# Just invoke this skill — it reads and runs the prompt inline

Pairs with auto-dream

kairos-lite and auto-dream are complementary. auto-dream runs nightly at 2:07 AM and consolidates memories. kairos-lite runs at 2:30 AM and checks external state. The nightly deep scan can incorporate the dream report into the toolkit health section.

Session-start injection: if both dream-injection-{project-hash}.md and briefing-{project-hash}-{date}.md exist, load both. Briefing takes precedence for action items; dream injection takes precedence for memory context.