Why build another task manager?

Windows Task Manager is good at telling you what's happening right now. It doesn't know what happened an hour ago, what a program usually does, or that a process which never used to wake up is now busy all night. Power tools like Process Explorer go deep, but they're built for investigation, not for leaving open all day.

Argus aims for the middle: a Task Manager you can use every day, with the extra tools close at hand and a memory built in. It deliberately doesn't try to be an antivirus, a kernel debugger or a malware-analysis tool.

How it's built

• .NET 10 and WPF, following Windows' light and dark themes
• One collector pipeline feeds the live views, history and detectors, with a single system call per refresh for all processes
• Documented Windows APIs by default; the rare exceptions are named and have fallbacks
• Runs as a standard user and asks for administrator only when an action needs it
• History lives in a local SQLite database in your profile, or in ProgramData when the service collects it

Privacy

Argus doesn't phone home. There are no accounts, no analytics and no crash uploads. Nothing leaves your machine unless you configure it, for example by adding a webhook for alerts, or connecting an AI assistant (whose provider receives what it asks Argus, without command lines unless you allow them). Turning on the optional BleachBit or Winapp2.ini cleaning definitions downloads them from GitHub (a plain file download that sends nothing about you); they're off by default. The update check, once it ships, will be the only default network call; it will send no identifying data, and you'll be able to turn it off in Settings or by policy. History can be paused, purged or told to ignore programs. Command lines are stored only if you allow it, and anything that looks like a password, token or key is removed first.

License

Argus is released under the Prosperity Public License by 42 Degrees Design. You may use and share it for free for noncommercial purposes, which includes personal use, hobby projects, research and study, and use by charities, educational institutions, public research, public safety and health organizations, and government. Commercial use gets a thirty-day trial per company. The software comes as is, without warranty.

Who makes it

Argus is made by 42 Degrees Design.

What you can ask

• "Why is my PC slow?" The assistant looks at what's busy now, finds the CPU, memory, disk and network spikes in the last stretch of time, and names the programs that drove them.
• "What drives the disk spikes every afternoon?" Correlations between the machine and each program, with a lag if one follows the other.
• "Is Teams leaking memory?" The leak detector's own fit over hours or days: the slope, how steady it is, whether it's speeding up, and the restarts in between.
• "Is this normal for it?" The last 15 minutes against the 7-day baseline Argus learned, and whether the program usually runs at this hour.
• "What changed since last week?" Two periods side by side, and the programs that are new, gone, up or down.
• "Make a Drives dashboard with sparklines for every disk." The assistant reads your hardware, builds the dashboard and shows it. Every change it makes comes with an Undo notification.

The numbers come from Argus's own analysis engine: averages, percentiles, trends, peaks and the shape of the curve, sized for the question, with a note on how exact they are. The assistant reasons over summaries, not thousands of raw points.

Connecting an assistant

argus-mcp.exe is installed next to Argus. Argus doesn't change any assistant's settings itself: you add it to your assistant once. Connecting an assistant has the steps for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, VS Code, Visual Studio, Cursor, ChatGPT and more.

The server also offers four ready-made prompts, which most assistants list as commands: why_slow, build_dashboard, program_report and what_changed.

What the assistant can and can't see

Whatever a tool returns is sent to the assistant's provider, so the assistant sees less than you do:

• It runs as you, so it never sees more than you would. On a shared computer, other people's programs appear by name only.
• No command lines, unless both you and (with the service) an administrator allow it; even then, passwords, tokens and keys are masked.
• Never environment variables, window titles, open file names or network addresses.
• No network listener: the server talks only to the assistant that started it, over its standard input and output.
• Every question it asks is logged on your PC, in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\logs\mcp.log.

You can turn assistants off, or stop them changing dashboards, in Settings → AI assistants. An administrator can turn them off for everyone on the computer. There's no tool that deletes a dashboard: an assistant can rename one "(archived)" for you to delete.

With or without the service

With the Argus service running, the assistant can answer from history even while the Argus app is closed. Without it, the app must be running, and the history is what the app recorded while it ran. Dashboard requests start Argus in the tray if it isn't open.

Before you start

• Install Argus. The server is C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe; the steps below use that path. If you installed Argus somewhere else, Settings → AI assistants in Argus shows where yours is, with the Claude Code, VS Code and Claude Desktop lines ready to copy.
• Assistants run on your computer for this, so a browser-only assistant (claude.ai or ChatGPT on the web) can't use Argus. Their desktop apps can.
• After adding Argus, restart the assistant, or start a new session. Most ask your permission the first time they use each Argus tool.
• Running a separate copy of Argus with --profile? Add --profile name as an argument to the server, the same way, so the assistant talks to that copy.

Claude Code

In a terminal (not inside a Claude session):

claude mcp add --scope user argus -- "C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe"

--scope user makes Argus available in every folder; leave it out to add it to the current project only. In a new session, /mcp shows whether it connected. The four prompts are slash commands such as /mcp__argus__why_slow. This works the same in Claude Code's VS Code and JetBrains extensions.

Claude Desktop

In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Developer → Edit Config. That opens %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json. Add Argus to mcpServers (if the file already has other servers, add the "argus" entry beside them):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "argus": {
      "command": "C:\\Program Files\\Argus\\argus-mcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

Quit Claude Desktop completely (from its tray icon, not just the window) and start it again. Argus then appears under the + button's Connectors.

VS Code (GitHub Copilot)

Run MCP: Open User Configuration from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) to add Argus for every workspace, or create .vscode/mcp.json for one:

{
  "servers": {
    "argus": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "C:\\Program Files\\Argus\\argus-mcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

Then switch Copilot Chat to Agent mode. Argus's tools are in the tools picker.

Visual Studio (GitHub Copilot)

Visual Studio 2022 17.14 or later, or Visual Studio 2026. Create %USERPROFILE%\.mcp.json to add Argus for every solution (or .mcp.json in a solution's folder for that solution only):

{
  "servers": {
    "argus": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "C:\\Program Files\\Argus\\argus-mcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

Or, in Copilot Chat, switch to Agent mode, select Tools, then +, and enter the command there. New tools start turned off: tick Argus's in the tools list. The prompts are under + Add Reference → Prompts → MCP prompts.

Cursor

Create or edit %USERPROFILE%\.cursor\mcp.json (or .cursor\mcp.json in a project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "argus": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "C:\\Program Files\\Argus\\argus-mcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

ChatGPT desktop app and Codex

In the ChatGPT desktop app, open Settings → MCP servers → Add server, choose STDIO, and enter C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe as the command. The desktop app, the Codex CLI and the Codex IDE extension share one configuration, so adding it in one adds it to all. From a terminal:

codex mcp add argus -- "C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe"

Or add it to %USERPROFILE%\.codex\config.toml yourself (single quotes keep the backslashes as they are):

[mcp_servers.argus]
command = 'C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe'

Gemini CLI

gemini mcp add --scope user argus "C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe"

Or add the same mcpServers entry as Claude Desktop's to %USERPROFILE%\.gemini\settings.json.

JetBrains IDEs (AI Assistant)

Open Settings → Tools → AI Assistant → Model Context Protocol (MCP), click Add, choose STDIO, and paste:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "argus": {
      "command": "C:\\Program Files\\Argus\\argus-mcp.exe"
    }
  }
}

Choose Global to have it in every project, then OK and Apply. The Status column shows when it's connected.

Other assistants

Cline, Roo Code, LM Studio, Zed, Goose and many others run local MCP servers too. Most take the same mcpServers entry as Claude Desktop, in their own settings file; look for "MCP servers" in their settings. Whatever the format, the server is a stdio (local command) server, the command is the path to argus-mcp.exe, and it needs no arguments, environment variables or keys.

Troubleshooting

• Argus doesn't appear. Restart the assistant completely. Check the path: run "C:\Program Files\Argus\argus-mcp.exe" --version in a terminal. In a JSON file, every backslash in the path is written twice.
• It connects, but every answer is "turned off". Check Settings → AI assistants in Argus. On a computer with the Argus service, an administrator may have turned assistants off for everyone.
• History has gaps. Without the service, Argus records only while the app runs. Installing the service (Settings → Service and history) records from boot.
• What did it ask? Every request is logged in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Argus\logs\mcp.log.