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Self-Contained Daemon SEA Feasibility Spike ​

Status: partial feasibility pass for the accepted Desktop v0.6 distribution boundary.

Date: 2026-07-27

Result ​

The existing bundled daemon can be injected into a Node single executable and run on the current macOS arm64 host without invoking a separately installed Node runtime at launch.

The macOS run completed this sequence:

text
existing esbuild daemon bundle
→ Node SEA preparation blob
→ postject injection
→ ad-hoc code signing
→ direct executable launch
→ authenticated Doctor request
→ graceful daemon shutdown
→ owned Unix socket removed

Observed result:

CheckResult
HostmacOS arm64
Build runtimeNode v22.17.0
Daemon bundle392,068 bytes; SHA-256 1c85f5cca8e91063daff4137df70017a057b4602d97e7c0a179f91928d76f3f7
SEA blob392,175 bytes
Injected executable110,123,392 bytes; SHA-256 7244085241dd073281ecb2b9813e43b45e6f726e9dfb69068112f8f47501247f
Protocol version returned1
Doctor resultexit code 3, five findings
Shutdowngraceful; forced termination not used
Owned endpoint cleanuppassed

The Doctor exit code is expected for the repository fixture and is evidence that the executable reached the real daemon/application path, not a synthetic health response.

Reproduction ​

The repeatable harness is scripts/desktop/sea-feasibility.mjs. It expects the existing compiled artifact at packages/daemon/dist/intentloomd.cjs and accepts:

  • POSTJECT_API or POSTJECT_BIN for a temporary postject injector;
  • INTENTLOOM_SEA_OUTPUT_DIR for an explicitly writable output directory.

The spike used postject@1.0.0-alpha.6 in a temporary directory. It was not added to repository dependencies.

The cross-platform runner is defined in desktop-sea-feasibility.yml. It runs Node 22 on the three target operating-system families, builds the daemon bundle, obtains the temporary injector, and executes this harness. A green workflow run is required before the platform gate is closed.

The macOS executable must be signed after injection. An unsigned injected copy was terminated by the host with SIGKILL; adding the documented ad-hoc re-signing step produced the successful result above.

The prepared macOS executable was copied to the fixed Tauri resource path Contents/Resources/resources/intentloomd. The Tauri packaging run produced an arm64 .app and .dmg; the embedded resource hash matched the SEA executable hash exactly. The catalog was also present at the deterministic Tauri resource path Contents/Resources/_up_/_up_/_up_/catalog, which the release bridge resolves explicitly. The default development Tauri config remains bundle-disabled; packaging uses the explicit tauri.packaging.conf.json override after sidecar preparation. DMG creation requires a host with working Disk Arbitration access; the sandboxed local attempt returned hdiutil: create failed - Device not configured, while the permitted system-mode package run completed.

Limitations and risks ​

  • Windows and Linux were not executable from this macOS host. The result is not a three-platform packaging claim.
  • Node SEA is still documented as active development. The exact Node runtime, postject version, binary injection flags, and signing process must be pinned per target in packaging CI.
  • The spike used useCodeCache: false and useSnapshot: false, which is the safe baseline for cross-platform artifact generation. Target-native builds still require their own runners and smoke tests.
  • Ad-hoc signing proves local execution only. It is not production signing, notarization, or release authorization.
  • The current daemon binary exposes the existing daemon operations. Capability discovery, Diff, Timeline, structured client errors, cancellation, and progress remain Phase 1 contract work.

Gate decision ​

The self-contained Node SEA/sidecar path is feasible on macOS arm64 and remains open for Windows and Linux. Do not call the Desktop distribution ready until equivalent runs pass on all three target platform families.

The next packaging gate is native Windows and Linux SEA plus Tauri smoke execution. Phase 2 must not claim cross-platform packaged readiness until those runs produce equivalent startup, authentication, graceful shutdown, endpoint cleanup, and embedded-resource evidence.

Evidence ​