claudemesh/apps/cli/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

1.31.1 (2026-05-04) — hotfix: reaper stops blocking the daemon event loop

1.31.0 shipped a session reaper that called execFileSync("ps") synchronously, once per registered session, every 5 seconds. With ten or more sessions registered the daemon's event loop stalled for hundreds of milliseconds at a time — long enough that incoming /v1/version probes from the CLI failed to return within the 2.5 s budget and the new "service-managed daemon not responding within 8000ms" warning fired against a perfectly healthy daemon.

Fix:

• getProcessStartTime is now async (execFile + promisify), never blocks the event loop.
• New getProcessStartTimes(pids) issues a single batched ps -p <p1>,<p2>,... for every survivor in one fork — sweep cost is fixed regardless of session count.
• registerSession stays synchronous: the start-time capture runs fire-and-forget so the IPC route returns instantly. The reaper falls back to bare liveness for the brief window before the start-time lands.
• reapDead is now async; the setInterval wrapper voids it so a rejected sweep can never crash the daemon.

Behavior is otherwise unchanged from 1.31.0 — same 5 s cadence, same PID-reuse guard semantics, same broker-WS teardown via the registry hook.

1.31.0 (2026-05-04) — session autoclean, install-time broker verification, no more spurious cold-path warnings under service management

Three operability changes targeting users who installed the daemon as a launchd / systemd service.

Session reaper now autocleans dead claude-code sessions

The daemon's session registry already had a 30-second reaper that deregistered entries whose pid was dead, but it had two gaps:

• Sweep cadence too slow. Stale presence on the broker lingered for up to half a minute after a session crashed.
• No PID-reuse guard. A recycled pid passes kill(pid, 0) even though the original process is gone, so the registry could trust a ghost.

Process-exit IPC from claude-code itself isn't a viable replacement — exit handlers don't run on SIGKILL, OOM, segfault, kernel panic, or power loss. The reaper has to be the source of truth.

What changed:

• Reaper interval 30 s → 5 s.
• On register, capture an opaque process start-time (ps -o lstart=, works on macOS and Linux). Stored alongside the pid.
• On each sweep, an entry is reaped when the pid is dead or the pid is alive but its start-time no longer matches what we captured.
• Registry hooks already close the per-session broker WS on deregister, so peer list rebuilds within one sweep of any session exit, no matter how the process died.

Local-host scope only — cross-host registrations are skipped (the daemon can't kill -0 a remote pid). Best-effort fallback to bare liveness when start-time capture fails (e.g., process already gone at register time).

Service-managed daemon: no more "spawn failed" false alarms

Users who installed via claudemesh install (which sets up launchd/systemd with KeepAlive=true) saw spurious warnings:

[claudemesh] warn daemon spawn failed: socket did not appear within 3000ms

even when the daemon was healthy. Two contributing causes:

1. Probe timeout was 800 ms. Tight enough that the first IPC after a launchd-driven restart (which migrates SQLite + opens broker WSes) routinely tripped it. Bumped to 2500 ms.
2. CLI raced launchd on respawn. When the probe failed, the CLI tried to spawn its own detached daemon, which collided with launchd's own restart cycle (singleton lock fails, child exits) and left the user with a 3-second timeout warning. Now: when the daemon is installed as a service unit (~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.claudemesh.daemon.plist or ~/.config/systemd/user/claudemesh-daemon.service exist), the CLI does not attempt to spawn. It waits up to 8 s for the OS to bring the socket up, and only fails out with a service-specific message pointing at launchctl print / systemctl status if the service genuinely failed.

New state service-not-ready distinguishes "OS-managed daemon hasn't come up yet" from "we tried to spawn and it failed" — the latter no longer fires when the daemon is service-managed.

claudemesh install now verifies broker connectivity, not just process start

Previously install ended once launchctl/systemctl reported the unit loaded — but a daemon that boots and then can't reach the broker (blocked outbound :443, expired TLS, DNS failure, broker outage) only surfaced as a confusing failure on the user's first peer list or send, sometimes hours later.

/v1/health was extended to include per-mesh broker WS state:

{ "ok": true, "pid": 58837, "brokers": { "flexicar": "open", "openclaw": "connecting" } }

After service start, install polls /v1/health for up to 15 s and prints either:

✔ broker connected (mesh=flexicar, 2 other meshes attaching)

or, on timeout:

warn  broker did not reach open within 15s (flexicar=connecting, openclaw=connecting)
      Check ~/.claudemesh/daemon/daemon.log for connect errors.
      Common causes: outbound :443 blocked, expired TLS, DNS resolution.

The verification is best-effort and doesn't fail the install — it just surfaces the issue early so the user can fix it before sending their first message.

Tests

4 new vitest cases cover the reaper paths: dead pid, live pid + matching start-time, live pid + mismatched start-time (PID reuse), and the no-start-time best-effort fallback.

1.30.2 (2026-05-04) — daemon service is multi-mesh by default

claudemesh install was hardcoding --mesh <primaryMesh> into the launchd plist / systemd unit, which locked the daemon to a single mesh and contradicted 1.26.0's multi-mesh design (one daemon attaches to every joined mesh on boot).

Net effect for users with more than one joined mesh: every CLI verb against a non-primary mesh fell off the daemon path back to cold-WS and re-handshakes a fresh broker connection on each call. Most visible symptom is [claudemesh] warn daemon spawn failed: socket did not appear within 3000ms when a launched session asks for peers in a sibling mesh, plus peer list --mesh foo returning peers from every attached mesh because the server-side filter never ran.

Now: install drops the --mesh arg entirely so the unit launches claudemesh daemon up (no flag), which attaches to every joined mesh. claudemesh daemon install-service --mesh <slug> is preserved for users who want to pin to one mesh (CI, single-mesh hosts).

1.30.1 (2026-05-04) — daemon install upgrade-safe + node-pinned

Two install-path fixes that bit on first user upgrade:

• Pin node by absolute path in the launchd plist / systemd unit. The bin script's #!/usr/bin/env node shebang resolves against the service environment's PATH, which on macOS launchd defaults to /usr/local/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin. That picks up whatever Node is installed system-wide instead of the Node that ran claudemesh install — and Node 22.x doesn't expose node:sqlite without the experimental flag, so the daemon crashed with db open failed: ERR_UNKNOWN_BUILTIN_MODULE. Now we write process.execPath as the first ProgramArgument so the daemon always runs under the same Node that installed it.
• Tear down the old daemon before re-bootstrapping. claudemesh install on a machine that already has a running daemon was hitting Bootstrap failed: 5: Input/output error because launchctl refuses to bootstrap a unit that's already loaded, and the old daemon process held the singleton lock. The install path now runs launchctl bootout (or systemctl --user stop) first, plus a SIGTERM to any orphaned daemon pid in ~/.claudemesh/daemon/ daemon.pid, so subsequent installs replace cleanly.

1.30.0 (2026-05-04) — per-session broker presence

Sprint A Phase 3. Two claudemesh launch sessions in the same cwd now see each other in peer list. Each launched session has a long-lived broker presence row owned by the daemon, identified by a per-launch ephemeral keypair vouched by the member's stable key (OAuth-refresh-vs- access shape).

What landed

• broker session_hello — new WS message type. Validates a parent-vouched parent_attestation (≤24h TTL, ed25519 signature by the parent member) plus a session-keyed signature on the hello itself. Inserts a presence row keyed on sessionPubkey but member_id from the parent, so member-targeted operations stay unchanged. Older brokers reply unknown_message_type — newer clients drop back to the previous behavior.
• daemon SessionBrokerClient — slim WS variant of DaemonBrokerClient. Presence-only, no outbox drain. Lifetime tied to a registry hook: register opens it, deregister/reaper closes it. Reconnect with exponential backoff up to 30 s.
• session-registry hooks — setRegistryHooks({ onRegister, onDeregister }) in apps/cli/src/daemon/session-registry.ts. Hook errors are caught so they never throttle the registry. SessionInfo gains an optional presence field carrying the per-launch keypair
  • attestation.
• IPC POST /v1/sessions/register — accepts an optional presence block on the body (session_pubkey, session_secret_key, parent_attestation). Older payloads continue to work.
• claudemesh launch — generates an ed25519 session keypair and a 12 h parent attestation per launch (mesh secret key signs it), forwards both to the daemon under body.presence. Per-session presence is always on; older brokers that don't recognize session_hello reply unknown_message_type and the daemon quietly drops the per-session WS for that mesh — the regular member-keyed WS still covers all functionality, the only loss is sibling-session visibility on that mesh.
• latent 1.29.0 bug fix — claudemesh launch referenced claudeSessionId before its const declaration further down the file, hitting the temporal dead zone → ReferenceError silently swallowed by the surrounding catch. Net: the IPC session-token registration has been failing every launch since 1.29.0, falling every session back to user-level scope. Hoisted the declaration up so the registration actually runs.

Sequencing

The broker side ships first and bakes for ~24 h. Older CLIs continue working unchanged (no per-session WS), and the protocol is purely additive on the wire.

Verification (smoke)

In two shells, both cd ~/Desktop/foo:

$ claudemesh launch --name SessionA -y    # shell 1
$ claudemesh launch --name SessionB -y    # shell 2

In a third shell:

$ claudemesh peer list --json --mesh foo \
    | jq '.[] | {n: .displayName, c: .cwd}'
{ "n": "SessionA", "c": "/.../foo" }    ← persistent, not query-induced
{ "n": "SessionB", "c": "/.../foo" }

Inside SessionA, peer list --mesh foo now lists SessionB. Kill SessionB; within ≤30 s the reaper drops it from peer list.

Out of scope (deferred)

• Attestation auto-refresh — current 12 h TTL is comfortably longer than typical sessions; if a session lives past the TTL and the WS reconnects after expiry, the broker rejects with expired and the SessionBrokerClient quiets. Workaround: claudemesh launch again. Auto-refresh queued for 1.31.0+ alongside HKDF identity.
• Per-session policy DSL — the per-launch WS could carry per-session capabilities later. Out of scope here.
• Cross-machine session sync — waits on 2.0.0 HKDF identity.
• Launch-wizard refactor — bumped to 1.31.0 to keep this release scoped to presence.

1.29.0 (2026-05-04) — per-session IPC tokens + auto-scoping

Sprint A Phase 2. Every claudemesh launch-spawned session gets a unique 32-byte cryptographic token that the daemon resolves on every IPC call to identify which session is talking to it. CLI invocations from inside that session auto-scope to its workspace instead of aggregating across every joined mesh.

What landed

• services/session/token.ts — mint random 32-byte token, write to <tmpdir>/session-token (mode 0o600). Reader pulls from CLAUDEMESH_IPC_TOKEN_FILE env (path, not value, to keep the secret off ps eww). Optional CLAUDEMESH_IPC_TOKEN direct-value escape hatch for tests.
• daemon/session-registry.ts — in-memory Map<token, SessionInfo> keyed by token, secondary index by sessionId. 30 s reaper drops entries whose pid is dead; 24 h hard TTL ceiling guards forgotten sessions.
• IPC routes — POST /v1/sessions/register, DELETE /v1/sessions/:token, GET /v1/sessions/me, GET /v1/sessions.
• IPC auth middleware — parses Authorization: ClaudeMesh-Session <hex> and attaches the resolved SessionInfo to request context. Layered on top of the existing local-token auth (used for TCP loopback). Backward-compatible: tokenless callers behave exactly as before.
• services/session/resolve.ts — CLI-side helper that asks the daemon GET /v1/sessions/me once per process and caches the result. Used by verbs that iterate meshes client-side.
• launch.ts — mints a token, registers it with the daemon, sets CLAUDEMESH_IPC_TOKEN_FILE on the spawned claude env. Token file lives in the same tmpdir as the session config; gets shredded on cleanup. The daemon's reaper handles dead sessions.
• peers.ts — selection precedence is now --mesh flag → session token's mesh → all joined meshes.

Server-side scoping

Every read route that takes ?mesh=<slug> (peers, state, memory, skills) now uses a meshFromCtx() helper: explicit query/body wins, session default fills in when missing. Write routes (set state, remember, deregister, profile-update) follow the same pattern. Pass --mesh to override.

Verified end-to-end

Setup	peer list returns
no token	3 meshes' peers (aggregate, unchanged)
token registered for prueba1	4 peers, all mesh: prueba1

Out of scope (deferred)

• SQLite persistence for the registry — restart loses it; the reaper (or callers re-registering) covers most cases.
• SO_PEERCRED-strict pid binding — needs a tiny native binding.
• Per-session policy DSL.
• Cross-machine session sync (waiting on 2.0.0 HKDF identity).

1.28.0 (2026-05-04) — bridge tier deletion + daemon-policy flags

First Sprint A drop on the way to v2 thin-client. Two structural changes:

Bridge tier deletion

• services/bridge/{client,server,protocol}.ts removed (~600 LoC). These were the per-mesh push-pipe sockets that the legacy MCP shim used to hold open; the 1.24.0 shim rewrite stopped opening them but the orphaned client kept being called as a "warm path" tier between daemon and cold. tryBridge() always returned null in production for the last seven releases — pure dead code.
• Each verb now has two paths only: daemon (with auto-spawn) → cold WS. Same pattern shipped in 1.27.3, simpler to follow.
• commands/{peers,send,broker-actions}.ts — bridge-tier blocks removed; orphaned unambiguousMesh helper removed from broker-actions.

--no-daemon and --strict flags

New per-process daemon policy:

Flag	Behavior
(default)	probe → auto-spawn → retry → cold fallback
--strict	probe → auto-spawn → retry → error if all fail. No cold fallback.
--no-daemon	skip daemon entirely → straight to cold path. For sandboxed CI / scripts that don't want a daemon.

Env equivalents: CLAUDEMESH_STRICT_DAEMON=1, CLAUDEMESH_NO_DAEMON=1. Flag wins over env. --no-daemon and --strict are mutually exclusive (--no-daemon wins if both passed).

Strict-mode enforcement lives at withMesh (the cold-path entry point) so a single chokepoint covers every verb. Under --strict, the lifecycle's misleading "using cold path" warning is suppressed so the user sees one clean error instead of a confusing two-step.

What's not in this release (planned for the rest of Sprint A)

• 1.29.0: per-session IPC tokens + auto-scoping
• 1.30.0: launch wizard refactor
• 1.31.0: setup wizard refactor
• 1.32.0: full mesh→workspace public-surface rename
• 2.0.0 (separate sprint): HKDF cross-machine identity (security-reviewed)

1.27.3 (2026-05-04) — self-healing daemon lifecycle

The CLI now auto-recovers from a dead daemon on every invocation instead of silently mis-routing through a stale socket.

What changed

• New services/daemon/lifecycle.ts — single helper that probes the IPC socket via /v1/version (instead of trusting existsSync), cleans up stale daemon.sock / daemon.pid files, and auto-spawns a detached claudemesh daemon up under a file-lock when the daemon is missing.
• Polls for socket liveness up to a budget (3 s for ad-hoc verbs, 10 s for claudemesh launch) before falling through.
• Recently-failed marker (~/.claudemesh/daemon/.spawn-failure, 30 s TTL) prevents thundering-herd retries when the daemon crash-loops at startup.
• Spawn-lock (~/.claudemesh/daemon/.spawn.lock) ensures concurrent CLI invocations share one spawn attempt instead of racing.
• Per-process result cache — a script doing 50 sends pays the spawn cost at most once, not 50 times.
• Recursion guard via CLAUDEMESH_INTERNAL_NO_AUTOSPAWN=1 env (set on the spawned daemon's env) so nested CLI calls inside the daemon process don't re-trigger spawn.

User-visible behavior

• peer list, send, state get, etc. now restart the daemon automatically when invoked while the daemon is down.
• One-line stderr info on auto-restart: [claudemesh] info daemon restarted automatically (took 615ms).
• Cold-path fallback fires only when auto-spawn fails or is suppressed by the recently-failed marker; in those cases a warn line points at the daemon log.

Bug fixed

claudemesh launch's ensureDaemonRunning previously checked only existsSync(SOCK_FILE) and returned early on a stale socket left by a crashed daemon — silently breaking new sessions. Now delegates to the lifecycle helper which probes the socket and recovers.

What's not in this patch

• --strict and --no-daemon flags (deferred to D in 1.28.0).
• Lazy-loading of cold-path code (deferred to 1.28.0).
• Per-session IPC tokens (deferred to 1.28.0 alongside D's thin-client conversion).

1.27.2 (2026-05-04) — skill: full-flag launch templates

Documentation-only ship. skills/claudemesh/SKILL.md gains a canonical "fully-populated spawn" recipe under "Wizard-free spawn templates" — every flag set explicitly, with a per-position annotation table — so agents and humans copy-paste a known-good kitchen-sink command instead of stitching one together from the flag table.

Also corrects two pre-existing inaccuracies:

• --system-prompt was documented as forwarding to claude --append-system-prompt. It actually forwards to claude --system-prompt (overrides the default; pass a string, not a path).
• -q was listed as a synonym for --quiet. The argv parser treats short flags (-X) and long flags (--xyz) as separate keys; only --quiet is wired. -q is currently a no-op.

Carries a note that all twelve launch flags are end-to-end wired only as of claudemesh-cli@1.27.1.

1.27.1 (2026-05-04) — wire missing launch flags

Fixes a wiring bug in apps/cli/src/entrypoints/cli.ts where six flags declared on LaunchFlags were silently dropped on the way to runLaunch. They were honored inside runLaunch if they ever arrived, but the four runLaunch({...}) call sites in the CLI entrypoint each forwarded a hardcoded 5-key subset (mesh, name, join, yes, resume).

Now forwarded at every entry point (bare command, bare invite URL, launch/connect, workspace launch):

• --role <r> — sets session role; previously only settable via wizard.
• --groups "frontend:lead,reviewers" — comma-separated groups string.
• --message-mode push|inbox|off — message delivery mode.
• --system-prompt <text> — passes through to claude.
• --continue — passes through to claude to continue last session.
• --quiet — actually suppresses the wizard and banner now. Previously it was a complete no-op flag at the CLI layer.

No internal logic changed; the launch internals already read these. This is a pure plumbing fix.

1.27.0 (2026-05-04) — state + memory through the daemon, workspace alias

Two more verb families now route through the local daemon's IPC for the warm path: state get/set/list and remember/recall/forget. Same pattern as 1.25.0 for peers/skills — try the socket first (~1 ms warm), fall back to the cold WS path when the daemon isn't running.

What changed

• claudemesh state get|set|list route through /v1/state when the daemon socket is present. --mesh <slug> forwards as a query/body field. Single-mesh daemons auto-pick; multi-mesh daemons require --mesh for state set.
• claudemesh remember, claudemesh recall, claudemesh forget (and claudemesh memory <sub>) route through /v1/memory. Aggregates across attached meshes for recall; requires --mesh for remember/forget when ambiguous.
• New claudemesh workspace <verb> alias surface — early teaser for the 1.28.0 mesh→workspace public rename. Mirrors list, info, create, join, delete, rename, share, launch, overview. No-arg claudemesh workspace falls through to launch (same as bare claudemesh).

IPC surface

• GET /v1/state — list (?mesh=<slug> filter) or single key lookup (?key=<k>&mesh=<slug>). Returns 404 with { error: "state_not_found" } when missing.
• POST /v1/state — { key, value, mesh? }. 400 + attached list when multi-mesh and no mesh field.
• GET /v1/memory?q=<query>&mesh=<slug> — recall. Aggregates across meshes, each match tagged with its mesh field.
• POST /v1/memory — { content, tags?, mesh? }. Returns { id, mesh }.
• DELETE /v1/memory/:id?mesh=<slug> — forget.
• ipc_features gains state and memory keys.

Why this matters

State and memory were the last verbs that opened a fresh broker WS on every invocation. Now they reuse the daemon's existing connection — the warm-path latency cliff (~150 ms cold WS handshake → ~1 ms IPC) extends to two more flows agents poll heavily.

The workspace alias is cosmetic but lays the groundwork for 1.28.0's documented rename without breaking anyone's muscle memory.

1.26.0 (2026-05-04) — multi-mesh daemon

The daemon now attaches to all joined meshes simultaneously by default. Ambient mode (raw claude after claudemesh install) finally delivers what v2.0.0 promised: one daemon process, one PID per user, all your meshes available concurrently with no manual switching.

What changed

• claudemesh daemon up (no --mesh flag) attaches to every joined mesh. One DaemonBrokerClient per mesh, all in one process. Pass --mesh <slug> to scope to a single mesh (legacy mode).
• daemon_started log line now reports meshes: [...] (array) instead of mesh: <slug> (single).
• Outbox dispatch picks the broker via the mesh column added in 1.25.0. Legacy rows (mesh=NULL) fall back to the only broker if there's exactly one; otherwise mark dead with a clear error.

IPC surface

• GET /v1/peers aggregates across all attached meshes; each peer record gains a mesh field. ?mesh=<slug> narrows server-side.
• GET /v1/skills aggregates similarly. GET /v1/skills/:name walks attached meshes and returns the first match (or ?mesh=<slug> to scope).
• POST /v1/send requires mesh field when the daemon is attached to multiple meshes; auto-picks the only one in single-mesh mode. Returns 400 with the attached mesh list if ambiguous.
• POST /v1/profile accepts optional mesh field — without it, applies the update to every attached mesh (presence stays consistent across meshes by default).

CLI integration

• claudemesh send --mesh <slug> forwards the mesh in the daemon request body. The CLI's expectedMesh argument was previously informational; now it's authoritative for routing.
• claudemesh peer list already aggregates because the IPC endpoint does — no change needed in the verb.
• Verified end-to-end: claudemesh send --mesh A and claudemesh send --mesh B from the same CLI invocation both reach outbox.status=done with broker-issued IDs, dispatched to the correct broker per row.

What this unlocks

Ambient mode for users with N meshes. Run claudemesh install once, then claude from anywhere — channel push, slash commands, and resources flow through the daemon for every joined mesh simultaneously. No more "which mesh is the daemon attached to?" mental overhead.

1.25.0 (2026-05-04) — Sprint 4 outbound routing + ambient mode

Daemon outbound routing (Sprint 4)

The v0.9.0 daemon shipped outbox infrastructure but its drain worker was a placeholder — every queued send went out as a broadcast (*). That's now fixed. Outbound resolution and crypto_box encryption happen at IPC accept time, then the drain worker just forwards the already-encrypted ciphertext to the broker.

• Outbox schema additions (additive, NULL allowed for legacy rows): mesh, target_spec, nonce, ciphertext, priority. Existing v0.9.0 rows keep draining via the broadcast fallback.
• IPC /v1/send resolves the user-friendly to (display name, hex prefix, full pubkey, @group, *, #topicId) into a broker-format target_spec and encrypts the plaintext using crypto_box for DMs (against recipient pubkey + sender session secret) or base64 for broadcast / topic / group targets.
• Drain worker reads target_spec, nonce, ciphertext, priority from the row and dispatches as-is. No per-row resolution at drain time means peer-presence flicker doesn't affect in-flight sends.
• Pubkey prefix matching: 16+ char hex prefix matches against peer.pubkey and peer.memberPubkey of connected peers. Ambiguous prefixes return 502 with a clear error.

Smoke test verified end-to-end: claudemesh send --self <prefix> "..." through daemon resolves, encrypts, and delivers. Outbox reaches status=done with broker-issued broker_message_id.

CLI thin-client routing extensions

claudemesh peer list and claudemesh skill list/get now route through the daemon when its socket is present, mirroring the trySendViaDaemon pattern from send.ts. Same fall-back chain: daemon → bridge → cold path.

New helpers in services/bridge/daemon-route.ts:

• tryListPeersViaDaemon()
• tryListSkillsViaDaemon()
• tryGetSkillViaDaemon(name)

Ambient mode

After claudemesh install (which now installs and starts the daemon service), raw claude Just Works for the daemon's attached mesh. No claudemesh launch ceremony needed for the common case. Channel push, slash commands, and resources flow through the daemon-backed MCP shim.

claudemesh launch remains the override path: explicit mesh selection, fresh display name, headless modes, system-prompt injection, or multi-mesh users who want to spawn into a non-default mesh.

Roadmap spec

.artifacts/specs/2026-05-04-v2-roadmap-completion.md documents exactly what's done vs. what remains for the full v2.0.0 endpoint: multi-mesh daemon (1.26.0), full CLI-to-thin-client conversion (1.27.0), mesh→workspace rename (1.28.0), HKDF identity (2.0.0).

1.24.0 (2026-05-03) — daemon required + thin MCP shim

The architectural convergence v0.9.0 was building toward.

Daemon promoted from optional to required (for in-Claude-Code use)

The CLI itself (claudemesh send, peer list, inbox, vault, watch, webhook, etc.) keeps working without a daemon. But the MCP server — which provides Claude Code's mid-turn channel push, slash commands, and resource browser — now requires the daemon. There is no fallback.

• claudemesh install auto-installs and starts the daemon service (launchd / systemd-user) for the user's primary mesh. Pass --no-service to opt out.
• claudemesh launch ensures the daemon is running before spawning Claude Code; spawns it foreground if absent.
• The MCP shim probes ~/.claudemesh/daemon/daemon.sock at boot. If missing after a 2s grace window, it bails with actionable instructions ("run claudemesh daemon up --mesh <slug>").

MCP server: 979 → ~300 LoC of push-pipe code

apps/cli/src/mcp/server.ts is now a thin daemon-SSE translator. It no longer holds a broker WebSocket, decrypts messages, manages mesh state, or runs reconnection logic. All of that is the daemon's job.

• Subscribes to daemon /v1/events SSE; translates each message event into a notifications/claude/channel emit.
• Sources mesh-published skills via daemon /v1/skills IPC for ListPrompts / GetPrompt / ListResources / ReadResource.
• ListTools returns [] (the CLI is the API, taught via the bundled skill).
• The mesh-service proxy mode (claudemesh-cli --service <name>, the sub-MCP-server for proxying a deployed mesh-MCP service) is unchanged — separate code path, different lifecycle.

Bundle size: MCP entry dropped from 154KB → 104KB (gzipped 34KB → 19KB).

Daemon SSE event payload extended

message events on /v1/events now include plaintext-decrypted body, sender member pubkey, priority, and subtype — everything the MCP shim needs to render a complete channel notification without going back to the broker.

Daemon IPC: GET /v1/skills (list) and GET /v1/skills/:name (get)

The daemon exposes mesh-published skills over IPC so the MCP shim can surface them as MCP prompts/resources without holding its own broker WS. Same wire format as before from Claude Code's perspective.

Why this is the right architecture

MCP and the daemon are no longer independent broker clients with duplicated WS, decrypt, and dedupe logic. The daemon owns the broker relationship; MCP is a Claude-Code-specific UX adapter that reads from the daemon. Industry-normal shape (Tailscale, Slack, Ollama, Docker) where the long-lived runtime is required and the per-app integrations attach to it.

1.23.0 (2026-05-03) — close the CLI surface, prune dead MCP stubs

Three previously-MCP-only write verbs land on the CLI, closing every functional gap between the (defunct since 1.5.0) MCP tool registry and the CLI:

• claudemesh vault set <key> <value> — encrypts client-side via crypto_secretbox_easy with a fresh symmetric key, then seals the key to the member's own pubkey via crypto_box_seal (same shape as the file-share crypto). Flags: --type env|file, --mount <path>, --description <text>. Pairs with the existing vault list/delete.
• claudemesh watch add <url> — registers a URL change watcher. Flags: --label, --interval <sec>, --mode, --extract <css>, --notify-on changed|always. Pairs with watch list/remove.
• claudemesh webhook create <name> — issues a fresh inbound webhook; prints url + one-shot secret. Pairs with webhook list/delete.

Cleanup: removed 22 dead stub files under apps/cli/src/mcp/tools/*, the unused router.ts, middleware/*, and handlers/* directories (~120 LoC). The MCP server in 1.5.0+ has been a tool-less push-pipe; these stubs were leftover scaffolding that never wired into the tools/list response. The legitimate MCP surfaces stay untouched:

• <channel source="claudemesh"> push pipe (the irreducible reason MCP exists at all — no other Claude Code surface can inject events mid-turn).
• Mesh skills exposed as MCP prompts (slash commands) and resources (skill://claudemesh/<name>).
• Mesh-deployed MCP services proxied via the sub-process tool surface (separate code path under server.ts:855+).

1.22.1 (2026-05-03) — daemon docs + help

• Root claudemesh --help now lists the daemon subcommand suite under its own section (was missing in 1.22.0).
• claudemesh daemon (no subcommand) now prints a usage block instead of silently launching the daemon. daemon help|--help|-h work too.
• Bundled SKILL.md gained a "Daemon path (v0.9.0, opt-in, fastest)" section explaining the runtime, lifecycle commands, and how it relates to claudemesh install (independent — not auto-started).

1.22.0 (2026-05-03) — daemon v0.9.0

New: claudemesh daemon — long-lived peer mesh runtime

Persistent local process that holds the broker WS, durable outbox/inbox in SQLite, IPC over UDS (+ optional loopback TCP with bearer token), and SSE event stream. Surrogates wire-up; claudemesh send and friends route through the daemon when its socket is present, falling back to the existing bridge / cold paths otherwise.

Subcommands:

• daemon up|start [--mesh <slug>] [--name ...] [--no-tcp] [--public-health]
• daemon status [--json], daemon down|stop, daemon version
• daemon outbox list [--failed|--pending|--inflight|--done]
• daemon outbox requeue <id> [--new-client-id <id>]
• daemon accept-host (per-host fingerprint pin)
• daemon install-service --mesh <slug> (macOS launchd / Linux systemd-user)
• daemon uninstall-service

Idempotency end-to-end:

• Caller-stable client_message_id + canonical request_fingerprint (sha256 of envelope_version || dest_kind || dest_ref || reply_to || priority || canonical_meta_json || body_hash) attach on every send.
• Broker persists both on mesh.message_queue (migration 0028, additive
  • nullable) and echoes them on push, so receiving daemons dedupe their inbox by client_message_id.
• §4.5.1 IPC duplicate-lookup table (11 cases × no-row / 5 statuses × match/mismatch) covered by 15 unit tests.

Crash recovery:

• Outbox row transitions: pending → inflight → done / dead / aborted. BEGIN IMMEDIATE serializes daemon-local writes; the drain worker is wakeable via promise-replacement and backs off failed sends.
• Decrypt path tries session secret key, then member secret key, then base64 fallback, so legacy unencrypted pushes still inbox cleanly.

Sprint 7 (broker-side dedupe enforcement: partial unique index + mesh.client_message_dedupe atomic-accept table) is intentionally deferred — see .artifacts/shipped/2026-05-03-daemon-spec-broker- hardening-followups.md.

1.0.0-alpha.0 (2026-04-13)

Architecture

• Complete folder restructure: entrypoints/, cli/, commands/, services/ (17 feature-folders with facade pattern), ui/, mcp/, constants/, types/, utils/, locales/, templates/
• 212 source files, 10,900 lines
• ESM-only, Bun bundler, TypeScript strict mode

New CLI commands

• claudemesh register — account creation via browser handoff
• claudemesh login — device-code OAuth
• claudemesh logout — revoke session + clear credentials
• claudemesh whoami — identity check with --json support
• claudemesh new <name> — create mesh from CLI (was dashboard-only)
• claudemesh invite [email] — generate invite from CLI (was dashboard-only)

Ported from v1 (full feature parity)

• All 79 MCP tools
• All 85 WS message types (broker protocol unchanged)
• Welcome wizard, launch flow, install/uninstall
• Ed25519 + NaCl crypto (keypairs, crypto_box DMs, file encryption)
• Reconnect with exponential backoff
• Status priority engine, scheduled messages, URL watch
• Doctor checks, Telegram bridge connect wizard

Security hardening (25 bugs fixed across 4 reviews)

• execFile instead of exec for browser open (command injection fix)
• ReDoS-safe pattern matching in peer file sharing
• Atomic config writes via temp file + rename
• Auth token stored with openSync(mode: 0o600) — no permission race
• Decryption oracle collapsed to generic error in get_file
• Download size limit (100MB) on file retrieval
• Path traversal protection with realpathSync for symlink escapes
• Callback listener double-resolve guard
• Push buffer 1MB per-message truncation
• makeReqId uses crypto.randomBytes instead of Math.random
• Connect guard prevents double-connect race

Breaking changes from v0.10.x

• Flat command namespace (no launch subcommand, no advanced prefix)
• New config shape (same data, cleaner layout)
• New --json output format with schema_version: "1.0"
• New exit codes (see constants/exit-codes.ts)