---

name: "node-zombie-guardian" description: "Use when diagnosing stale or orphaned Node.js processes launched by VCO, auditing ownership/liveness, or safely simulating cleanup without touching external Node workloads."

Node Zombie Guardian

This skill is for managed-process hygiene inside the VCO ecosystem.

It exists to answer one question safely: which Node processes belong to VCO, which of them are stale, and which of those are eligible for cleanup without risking live external workloads.

Safety Boundary

• Only processes with ownership = vco-managed can ever become cleanup candidates.
• external and unknown processes remain audit-only.
• Cleanup is report-first by default.
• Fixture -Apply mode remains simulation-only and must never terminate real processes.

When To Use

• Node processes accumulate after long VCO runs and you need an ownership-aware audit.
• You want to register or observe VCO-launched Node processes through the wrapper.
• You need a Markdown or JSON report of managed vs external Node processes.
• You want to simulate cleanup of stale VCO-managed Node processes without touching real workloads.

Operator Surfaces

This skill is a focused wrapper around the operator scripts that live in the bundled vibe skill:

• ../vibe/scripts/common/NodeLaunchWrapper.ps1
• ../vibe/scripts/governance/Invoke-NodeProcessAudit.ps1
• ../vibe/scripts/governance/Invoke-NodeZombieCleanup.ps1
• ../vibe/scripts/verify/vibe-node-zombie-gate.ps1

Quick Start

1. Launch a managed Node process through the wrapper

Use the wrapper when VCO starts a Node workload that should be tracked in the ledger.

& "..\vibe\scripts\common\NodeLaunchWrapper.ps1" `
  -RepoRoot "C:\path\to\repo" `
  -Command "node" `
  -ArgumentList @("scripts\worker.js")

2. Audit live Node ownership and liveness

Default mode is read-only and emits a report.

& "..\vibe\scripts\governance\Invoke-NodeProcessAudit.ps1" `
  -RepoRoot "C:\path\to\repo" `
  -WriteArtifacts

Expected outcomes:

• classify processes such as managed_live, managed_stale, external_audit_only
• emit JSON and Markdown artifacts for review
• keep non-managed processes out of the cleanup candidate set

3. Simulate cleanup

Cleanup remains report-only unless explicitly switched, and the safety filters still apply.

& "..\vibe\scripts\governance\Invoke-NodeZombieCleanup.ps1" `
  -RepoRoot "C:\path\to\repo" `
  -WriteArtifacts

Use this to confirm which managed stale processes would be targeted before any real cleanup path is considered.

Verification

Run the dedicated gate before trusting changes in this area:

& "..\vibe\scripts\verify\vibe-node-zombie-gate.ps1" -WriteArtifacts

The gate proves:

• classification is deterministic on fixtures
• only managed rows become cleanup candidates
• external rows never become cleanup candidates
• report-only mode never terminates processes
• fixture -Apply mode stays simulated