bus-top - friendly local process monitor
bus-top - friendly local process monitor
bus top is a local process monitor for developers and operators who want to
understand what is running without decoding every process name manually. It
shows deterministic process and system facts, groups related processes into
families, and can add optional AI explanations when a backend is configured.
The monitor remains useful without AI. AI explanations are an annotation layer over sampled process facts, cached process-family records, and redacted prompt inputs.
Common tasks
Open the live process monitor:
bus top
Disable AI and use only deterministic local facts:
bus top --ai off
Write one machine-readable process snapshot:
bus top --snapshot --format json
Warm the explanation cache when an AI backend is configured:
bus top --ai on --warm-ai
Run a bounded self-check for Bus Top’s own resource use:
bus top --self-check --self-check-duration 5s
Collect bounded host diagnosis evidence:
bus top --diagnose host --ai auto
Synopsis
bus top [--ai <auto|off|on>] [--sample-interval <duration>] [--privacy <redacted|local>] [global flags]
bus top --snapshot --format json [global flags]
bus top --explain <pid> [--ai <auto|off|on>] [global flags]
bus top --warm-ai [--ai <auto|on>] [global flags]
bus top --self-check --self-check-duration <duration> [global flags]
bus top --diagnose host [--ai <auto|off|on>] [global flags]
What the output tells you
The live view focuses on system pressure, ranked processes, process-family grouping, and selected-process details. Process families let repeated helpers, browser workers, language servers, dev servers, databases, agents, and BusDK tools share one explanation instead of producing repeated noise.
Snapshot mode emits deterministic data for scripts, tests, support handoffs, or bug reports. Diagnosis and self-check modes are bounded command runs rather than live monitor loops.
AI and privacy
--ai auto is cache-first. It can use cached explanations and request new
summaries only when a backend is configured. --ai off disables new AI calls.
--privacy redacted is the default and avoids sending full local command
arguments to the model.
Bus Top is inspect-only. It can explain what to inspect next, but it does not kill, renice, or signal processes.