Daemon Supervisor

Daemon Supervisor

The daemon supervisor manages three background processes required for tool security and job scheduling.

Architecture

cortex daemon start
         │
         ▼
  supervisor-process.ts
         │
         ├── validator-process.ts   ← IPC socket: approves/rejects tool intents
         │     policy check → allow/deny → logged to Lens
         │
         ├── executor-process.ts    ← IPC socket: executes approved tool calls
         │     file read/write, shell commands, directory listing
         │
         └── scheduler-process.ts   ← DB polling: runs cron jobs every 30s
               memory consolidation, scheduled commands

Supervision Loop

• Each child is spawned via Deno.Command with scoped --allow-* permissions
• On crash (non-zero exit): wait min(2^n × 1s, 30s) then restart
• On clean exit (zero exit): not restarted
• SIGINT/SIGTERM: cascading shutdown of all children

IPC Protocol

Three daemons communicate via Unix domain sockets (configurable via CORTEX_SOCKET_DIR):

/tmp/cortex/validator.sock
/tmp/cortex/executor.sock
/tmp/cortex/scheduler.sock

Messages are JSON-line, connection-per-message. Heartbeat pings check liveness.

CLI

cortex daemon start                  # Start supervisor (background)
cortex daemon stop                   # Stop supervisor
cortex daemon restart                # Restart supervisor
cortex daemon run                    # Run in foreground (systemd/tmux)
cortex daemon status                 # Check process status
cortex service install --daemon-only # Install as system service (all platforms)
cortex service uninstall --daemon-only # Remove system service

Auto-Start

cortex agent chat and cortex server start call ensureDaemons() which pings the validator socket and starts the supervisor if needed.

Security

Validator is fail-closed: when the validator daemon is unreachable, tool calls are denied rather than silently auto-approved.

See Also

• Service Installation — Platform-specific service setup
• Security — Policy validation and tool gating