Daemon

Local Daemon (clawd)

The always-on background service that powers all ClawDE functionality. Written in Rust for performance and reliability.

Overview

clawd is a long-running process that starts at login and runs in the background. It owns the filesystem, manages sessions, runs validators, and serves the API that all UIs connect to. When you close the desktop app, the daemon keeps running — your AI sessions continue in the background.

Capabilities

Feature	Description
Background service	Runs as launchd (macOS), systemd (Linux), or Windows Service
Auto-start	Registered with OS service manager, starts at login
Local API	HTTP + WebSocket server on localhost
Health monitoring	/health and /version endpoints
SQLite storage	Repos, sessions, profiles, settings
JSONL event logs	Per-session append-only event streams
Repo registry	Track registered repos with file watchers
Git integration	Branch and status awareness via libgit2
Graceful shutdown	Clean resource release, pending write flush
Configuration	config.toml with hot-reload support

CLI Commands

clawd start             # Start the daemon
clawd stop              # Stop the daemon
clawd status            # Check if daemon is running
clawd install           # Register with OS service manager
clawd uninstall         # Remove from OS service manager

How It Works

1. On first install, clawd install registers with your OS service manager
2. The daemon starts automatically at login
3. It opens a local HTTP + WebSocket server (default: localhost:4300)
4. Desktop, web, and mobile apps connect to this API
5. All state is stored locally in ~/.clawd/ (SQLite database + JSONL logs)

Configuration

The daemon reads ~/.clawd/config.toml:

[daemon]
port = 4300
log_level = "info"

[storage]
db_path = "~/.clawd/clawd.db"
log_path = "~/.clawd/logs/"