Home, Inbox and incidents

Everything Cloak Watch finds becomes an incident: one card per root cause, however many files and lockfiles it touches. Home tells you whether anything needs you, the Inbox lists every incident by how urgent it is, and each incident page says what happened, what it means for this Mac and how to fix it.

Home

Home is a single status screen for the whole Mac. Its headline, its one round button and its color follow what Watch found.

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When something needs fixing now, Home turns red and its button becomes Fix all.

1. What needs fixing, in plain words
2. Fix all: shows the plan before anything changes
3. Open the incidents in the Inbox
4. Chips open each Inventory tab

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State	Headline	Button
Before the first scan	Take stock of this Mac	Scan
Scanning	Scanning this Mac, with what it’s reading	A progress ring with the percentage
Nothing found	Your Mac is clear, with how many packages in how many projects Watch checked, and when	Scan
Only things worth a look	Nothing harmful found, with Look at it or Look at them	Scan
Something to fix now	1 thing needs fixing now or N things need fixing now, naming them, with Review details and any other things to look at	Fix it or Fix all

Along the bottom, five chips count Packages, Extensions, AI tools, Startup items and Keys. A dot shows each one’s state: filled when clean, a ring when something is worth a look, a cross when something is malicious. Click a chip to open that Inventory tab. Under them, Get more from Watch offers the optional AI extras, and a line shows the feed (for example Free feed · checked 4 min ago · signature verified) and today’s AI activity. When a new version is out, it adds Cloak Watch 1.0.x is available · Download.

Alert tiers

Every incident has one of three tiers. The Inbox groups them under plain names.

Tier	Inbox group	When	How it reaches you
Act now	Fix now	Something malicious is on this Mac, or a key has leaked.	Notifies you at once, even in most Focus modes. Red glyph, counted on the menu bar icon.
Review	Worth a look	Something unusual that isn’t confirmed: a new MCP server, a risky setting.	Waits in the Inbox; at most one reminder a day. Orange glyph.
FYI	Good to know	Tips, and attacks that don’t affect you.	Waits in the Inbox; never notifies. Grey glyph.

Change how they reach you in Settings › Alerts. The detection catalogue gives each check’s tier.

The Inbox

The Inbox lists incidents on the left and the selected one on the right. Its subtitle counts them, for example 2 to fix now · 3 worth a look · 2 good to know.

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1. Open or History
2. Search the incidents
3. Grouped by tier
4. Fix It, with how many things Watch will do

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• Open shows incidents that still need something. History keeps the rest, grouped under Fixed, Not a problem and Advisories that didn’t affect this Mac.
• Search filters the list.
• Each row shows the headline, where it is (for example In shopapp, the npm cache and 2 more places) and when Watch found it.
• With nothing open, the Inbox says Nothing needs you, with See History when there’s history to see.
• I Think I’ve Been Hit…, at the top, opens a step-by-step plan for containing an attack and revoking, rotating and checking your keys (from 1.2.0). See Respond to an incident.
• Under review cards, which are coming with the Live Feed plan, show what changed in a new release and how to dispute the review.

Read an incident

An incident page is written for someone who has never heard of the attack. Internal codes only appear under Details.

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Part	What it shows
Headline	What happened on this Mac, for example A malicious version of quickcache-utils-demo is on this Mac or A malicious MCP server is set up in Claude Desktop. Under it: where, and when Watch found it.
Fix It	When Watch has steps it can do itself: Watch does N things, and shows you first. Nothing is deleted. You can undo any of it. When it has none, Check Again instead, with Nothing here for Watch to change. Do the steps below, then check again.
What happened	The incident in plain words, from the feed’s write-up, when the bad versions were available (The bad versions were available …), and Read more links to the sources. For checks that don’t come from the feed, a short explanation of what the check looks for and why.
What this means for you	Where Watch found it, when it arrived and whether that was while the bad version was available, whether its code ran (it left a hook or a background program behind) or it was only downloaded, and which of your credential files the attack collects. Watch checks those files exist; it never reads them.
Show evidence (N places)	A table of every place, described below.
What to do / Then, yourself	Steps only you can do, described below.
Details	Reference (the feed’s ID), Also known as (advisory IDs), Checks that found it (detection IDs), First seen and Last checked.

Evidence

Show evidence opens a table with one row per place.

Column	Meaning
Kind	Installed, Lockfile, Cache, File, Launch item, Config and so on
What	What Watch saw there, for example quickcache-utils-demo@6.0.0 installed. Secrets show only masked.
Where	The path. Hover to see it in full.
Arrived	When the file was last written, from its modification and change times. Hover for the exact time.
While out	Yes (red) when it arrived while the bad version was available. Before or After (green) when it arrived before the bad version was published or after it was taken down. A dash when the arrival time isn’t known.

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Steps you do yourself

Some steps only you can do, such as replacing a token or reinstalling from a clean lockfile. Watch never runs package managers for you. Each step has:

• a short instruction and why;
• an Open … button when there’s a page to go to, such as Open github.com for replacing GitHub tokens;
• an I’ve done this checkbox. The ticks are only for your own tracking: Watch doesn’t check them.

Steps that replace tokens are locked until Watch has done its part: Do this after Fix it, so nothing reacts to the change. Some worms watch for a revoked token and react, so the background program has to go first.

Fix it and Fix all

Fix It on an incident, Fix all on Home, and Fix It… / Fix All… in the menu bar open the same sheet. It shows the whole plan before anything changes.

1. Read the plan. Watch will lists the numbered steps in the order Watch runs them. Afterwards, yourself lists your own steps. Nothing has changed yet.

   

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2. Click Fix It (or Cancel). Watch runs the steps one at a time, ticking each off. You can keep working; it takes a few seconds.

3. Watch checks the affected places again (Checking that it’s gone…), then shows the result:

   • Fixed. Watch moved N items to Quarantine. when the incident is gone.
   • Watch moved N items to Quarantine. A few things are left for you. when it’s still there, usually because of a step only you can do. Now, yourself lists those steps with their links. Do them, then click Check Again.

   Each step Watch did has Show in Finder and Undo. Click Done to close the sheet.

   

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If Subcloak has paused automatic fixes from the signed feed (because one has a problem), the sheet says Automatic fixes are paused. Here’s what needs doing, in this order. and lists every step for you to do yourself, under Steps, in order.

If a step fails, Watch stops there (Watch stopped at step N) and leaves the rest waiting, because the order matters. Fix the problem it describes, for example a file that belongs to another user, then click Retry, or Close and come back later.

Fix all merges the steps of every incident that needs fixing now into one plan, removes duplicates (two incidents can share the same launch agent), and puts them in a safe order.

What Watch can do itself

Step	What happens
Stop a background program	Stops the launch agent or daemon (launchctl bootout) and moves its plist to Quarantine. It stops running now and won’t start at login.
Move a file or folder	Moves it to Quarantine, for example a malicious package folder in node_modules or a dropped payload.
Remove a hook, task, profile line or MCP server	Removes one hook from a Claude Code settings file, one task from .vscode/tasks.json, one line from a shell profile, or one MCP server from an AI app’s settings. Everything else in the file stays; the original file is kept in Quarantine.
Move a download cache	Moves the npm, npx, Yarn, pip, uv or Bun cache to Quarantine, so the bad version can’t come back from it. The package manager downloads what it needs again on your next install. Watch leaves pnpm’s store alone, because projects link into it.

Everything else is a step you do: replacing tokens, reinstalling a package from a clean lockfile, updating a package, recreating Python environments, uninstalling an extension, blocking a domain.

The order Watch uses

1. Remove persistence first: background programs, hooks and tasks. Some worms watch for revoked tokens and react, one by wiping the home folder.
2. Then files and hooks.
3. Then packages and caches.
4. Then replace secrets.
5. Then block domains.

Within each phase, the incident pack’s own order wins.

Mark an incident as not a problem

If an incident is something you added on purpose, or a false alarm, tell Watch so it stops showing it.

1. On the incident page, click the … button at the top right.

2. Choose This Isn’t a Problem….

3. Pick why: I added this myself, It’s my company’s setup, It’s a false alarm or I don’t use this any more.

Watch won’t show it again, even after later scans. It moves to History › Not a problem, where Reopen brings it back. Fixed incidents that come back reopen and notify you again.

Export an incident

The … menu on an incident page also has:

Command	What you get
Export as Markdown…	A .md file with the headline, verdict, what happened with sources, what it means for you, the evidence table, what Watch does on Fix it, your steps with their ticks, and details.
Export as PDF…	The same, as a PDF.
Copy Summary	A short summary on the clipboard.

Exports never include secret values; evidence holds only masked previews. They do include file paths from your Mac, so check before you share one.

Advisories that didn’t affect this Mac

When the feed reports an attack and nothing on your Mac matches, Watch records a verdict in History › Advisories that didn’t affect this Mac: This Mac isn’t affected, with Why not, for example that none of the malicious versions is in your lockfiles, node_modules, global installs or caches, and none of the attack’s files or background programs is present.

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Related

Quarantine and restoreWhere moved files go and how to put them back.

Detection catalogueEvery check and its tier.

FeedWhere incidents come from.