whoate

See which agent session, tmux pane or app is eating your Mac's memory — and let your coding agent ask too.

brew install zhenninglang/tap/whoate

How is it different from Activity Monitor?

• Owners, not a list of process names. Memory and CPU are grouped by the coding-agent session, the tmux pane and the app that started them, each with all its helpers.
• Orphans show up. whoate finds the processes a closed terminal left behind and tells you where they came from.
• A CLI made for agents. Your coding agent gets structured JSON and exit codes from one command; the diagnosis is rule-based on your Mac, so it spends zero tokens.

Use it from a coding agent

whoate top --json                    # owners ranked by memory
whoate why 12345 --json              # who owns this pid, and why
whoate agent-guide                   # the agent instructions (SKILL.md)
whoate top --by cpu -n 20 --json     # by CPU
whoate orphans --json                # leftovers from closed terminals
whoate agents --json                 # coding-agent sessions
whoate pane '%12' --json             # everything under a tmux pane
whoate swarms --json                 # many copies of the same command
whoate watch --interval 2s --json-lines
whoate kill 12345 --dry-run          # preview; --yes only after a human approves
whoate insights --list               # every knowledge-base entry, with source and date

• Every JSON document has schema: "whoate/v1". Memory is in bytes; CPU is percent of one core. null means unknown, never zero.
• Each owner's optional origin.launched_from says where it was started (a terminal app, a tmux pane, or the app that launched it).
• Exit codes: 0 normal, 1 an "act" diagnosis or a fatal error (JSON then carries error), 2 bad arguments, 3 target not found, 4 refused for safety (root, Apple platform binaries and whoate itself are never killed).
• Conversation text stays out by default: the first prompt and reply are null unless you pass --prompts.

Give your agent the instructions: whoate agent-guide prints SKILL.md. Save it as .claude/skills/whoate/SKILL.md (Claude Code), .kilocode/skills/whoate/SKILL.md (Kilo) or .opencode/skills/whoate/SKILL.md (OpenCode):

mkdir -p .claude/skills/whoate && whoate agent-guide > .claude/skills/whoate/SKILL.md

The JSON Schema is installed at $(brew --prefix)/share/whoate/whoate-v1.schema.json (the Release tarball has it under schema/); the source is schema/whoate-v1.schema.json.

What it knows

• Per-software insight. whoate knows how each piece of software splits into processes and explains them in that software's own terms: an agent session and its MCP servers, Chrome's tab and extension processes, Docker's VM and containers, an IDE's language servers. Advice comes from a built-in knowledge base where every entry cites its source.
• Made for agents, zero tokens. One command gives your coding agent structured JSON (schema: "whoate/v1") and meaningful exit codes. Diagnosis is rule-based on your machine: no model calls, no network, no tokens spent.

In the app, the left column groups owners into categories such as AI & Agent (coding-agent sessions and AI apps), apps and orphans. Its numbers, like the Owners · footprint list, are footprint: physical memory plus compressed or swapped memory, so owners can add up to more than your RAM. Each row starts with where the owner was launched from, for example Ghostty · tmux main:10.1.

Product page · Releases · Changelog · 中文说明

Menu bar panel	A browser and its helper processes
An orphan from a closed terminal	Settings → Command Line
Dark mode

Install

Apple Silicon, macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

brew install zhenninglang/tap/whoate

That installs the whoate CLI. The menu bar app:

brew install --cask zhenninglang/tap/whoate

or download the …-macos-arm64-app.zip asset from Releases and move whoate.app to Applications.

The app also carries the CLI. With the app alone, put it on your PATH from whoate Settings → Command Line → Install. If you later install the formula and Homebrew reports a link conflict, run brew link --overwrite whoate.

First launch of the app

whoate.app is ad-hoc signed but not notarized (notarization needs a paid Apple Developer account; v1 skips it). macOS therefore blocks the first launch. To allow it once:

1. Open whoate.app; macOS says it cannot verify the developer. Click Done.
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the message about whoate, and click Open Anyway. Confirm with your password or Touch ID.

Or remove the quarantine flag in Terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/whoate.app

Upgrade with brew upgrade whoate and brew upgrade --cask whoate; the app never checks for updates and never goes online. Uninstalling and building from source: docs/install.md.

Your own rules

Name your own processes and attach advice in ~/.config/whoate/rules.toml (override the path with WHOATE_RULES). Each [[rules]] entry needs a label, an advice, and at least one matcher; the first matching rule wins.

Field	Meaning
executable	File name of the executable, e.g. node (not a path)
argv_regex	Regular expression matched against the full command line
cwd_prefix	The process's working directory starts with this path
label	Name shown for the owner (required)
advice	Your advice, shown as a fact on the owner (required)

[[rules]]
executable = "node"
argv_regex = "vite( |$)"
cwd_prefix = "/Users/me/work/shop"
label = "Shop dev server"
advice = "Stop it with Ctrl-C in its pane when you are done."

Unknown fields, empty matchers or a bad regex disable the whole file; whoate then reports an issue with stage: "user_rules" in the JSON issues[].

Privacy

whoate only reads local process and session information. It does not use the network, does not call any model, and never changes another application's settings; advice is for you to act on.

Support whoate

If whoate helped, star it on GitHub: it helps other people find it. Or buy me a hot cup of coffee: it's a cold winter in the software industry (WeChat Pay):

中文说明

看清是哪个编程助手会话、哪个 tmux 分屏、哪个应用在吃 Mac 的内存，也让你的编程助手自己来查。

和活动监视器有什么不同

• 按归属看，而不是一串进程名：内存和 CPU 按启动它们的编程助手会话、tmux 分屏和应用归到一起，连同各自带起来的子进程。
• 能看出孤儿进程：找出终端关掉后留下的进程，并写明它们从哪来。
• 给 agent 用的命令行：一条命令给编程助手结构化 JSON 和退出码；诊断在本机按规则完成，零 token。

whoate 还按各个软件自己的结构解释进程，例如编程助手会话和它的 MCP 服务、Chrome 的标签页进程与扩展进程、Docker 的虚拟机与容器、IDE 的语言服务。建议来自内置知识库，每条都附出处和核对日期（whoate insights --list 可全部列出）。

应用左栏按类别分组，例如「AI & Agent」（编程助手会话和 AI 应用）、应用、孤儿进程。左栏和「归属 · 占用」列表里的数字是占用：占用 = 物理内存 + 压缩/swap，所以各归属相加可以超过物理内存总量。每行开头写从哪启动，例如 Ghostty · tmux main:10.1。

安装与首次打开

只支持 Apple Silicon、macOS 14 及以上。

brew install zhenninglang/tap/whoate            # 命令行
brew install --cask zhenninglang/tap/whoate     # 菜单栏应用

应用里也带了命令行工具。只装了应用时，在 whoate 设置 → 命令行 →「安装」 把它放进 PATH；之后再用 Homebrew 装命令行、提示链接冲突时，运行 brew link --overwrite whoate。更新用 brew upgrade whoate、brew upgrade --cask whoate；应用不会自己检查更新，也不联网。

应用没有做 Apple 公证（第一版不办开发者账号），首次打开会被系统拦下。放行步骤：先打开一次 whoate.app，在弹窗里点「完成」；然后打开 系统设置 → 隐私与安全性，在页面下方找到 whoate 的提示，点 「仍要打开」，再输入密码或用触控 ID 确认。也可以在终端执行 xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/whoate.app。

给 agent 用

• 让 agent 运行 whoate top --json（谁占内存）、whoate why <pid>（某个进程归谁、为什么）、whoate agent-guide（给 agent 的完整说明）；内存单位是字节，null 表示未知、不是 0。
• 退出码：0 正常；1 有需要处理的诊断或致命错误；2 参数错误；3 目标不存在；4 因安全原因拒绝。
• whoate agent-guide 打印 SKILL.md，按上文放进 .claude/skills/whoate/ 等目录即可。
• 结束进程先 whoate kill <目标> --dry-run 预览，人同意后才加 --yes。
• 自定义规则写在 ~/.config/whoate/rules.toml，格式见上文「Your own rules」。

支持 whoate

觉得有用，请在 GitHub 上点个 Star，让更多人看到它。也可以给我买一杯热腾腾的咖啡，软件行业的冬天太冷了：

介绍页：https://zhenninglang.github.io/whoate/ · 更新记录：CHANGELOG.md

License

MIT