bip.scout

/​bip.scout

Check remote server availability and resource usage. Runs bip scout to collect metrics, presents a human-readable summary, and answers follow-up questions by reasoning over the data.

Usage

/​bip.scout [question]

Arguments:

• [question] — Optional natural-language question (e.g., "which server has free GPUs?", "where should I run a training job?")

If no question is given, show a full summary of all servers.

Workflow

Step 1: Collect Server Metrics

Run bip scout from the nexus directory to get JSON output:

bip scout

If the command fails, check for common issues:

• Missing servers.yml: "No servers.yml found. Create one in your nexus directory — see bip scout --help."
• SSH authentication failure: Report the error and suggest checking SSH agent and ~/​.ssh/​config.
• All servers offline: Report that all servers are unreachable and suggest checking network/​VPN.

Step 2: Parse JSON Output

The JSON output has this structure:

{
  "servers": [
    {
      "name": "servername",
      "status": "online",
      "metrics": {
        "cpu_percent": 45.2,
        "memory_percent": 62.1,
        "load_avg_1min": 2.3,
        "load_avg_5min": 1.8,
        "load_avg_15min": 1.5,
        "gpus": [
          {
            "utilization_percent": 85,
            "memory_used_mb": 30720,
            "memory_total_mb": 49152
          }
        ],
        "top_users": [
          {"user": "alice", "cpu_percent": 45.2},
          {"user": "bob", "cpu_percent": 12.1}
        ]
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "deadserver",
      "status": "offline",
      "error": "connection timed out"
    }
  ]
}

Step 3: Present Results

If no question was asked, present a summary table showing:

• All servers grouped by status (online first, offline last)
• For online servers: CPU%, Memory%, per-GPU utilization and memory
• For offline servers: note them as unreachable
• Highlight servers with low utilization (CPU < 20%, no busy GPUs) as good candidates

If a question was asked, reason over the JSON data to answer it. Common question types:

Formatting guidelines:

• Use a markdown table for multi-server summaries
• Convert GPU memory from MB to GB for readability (divide by 1024)
• Show percentages with one decimal place
• For GPU-focused questions, show per-GPU breakdown (not just averages)

Step 4: Offer Follow-Up

After presenting results, briefly note that the user can ask follow-up questions like:

• "Which of these has the most free GPU memory?"
• "Run my job on the least-loaded GPU server"

Error Handling

• bip not found: Report error, suggest building with go build -o bip ./​cmd/​bip
• servers.yml missing: Report error, suggest creating config file
• SSH failures: Report which servers failed and why
• No GPU servers: Note that no servers are configured with has_gpu: true