möbius Gateway
mobius-gateway is the headless möbius runtime. One process owns machine
credentials, usage, and scheduled tasks while hosting up to 32 independent
chat agents. Every chat owns its canonical workspace, model, reasoning, agent
features, approval policy, and prompt. The terminal, iPhone, and iPad
clients can independently open different chats or subscribe to the same one.
Chats store enabled optional middleware IDs and generic scalar settings. The gateway advertises
the ordered middleware catalog plus integer and select control schemas, so terminal and iOS
clients render new middleware and settings without capability-specific code. Context offloading
is enabled by default and masks successful tool output after a 50,000-token trailing window. The
gateway always installs sandboxing, workspace tools, turn steering, and durable sessions.
Scheduling is an optional capability and is enabled by default for new chats.
Install mobius-cli to get both the client and gateway commands:
The separately versioned mobius-gateway crate is the runtime library used by those binaries.
Initialize and pair the default gateway:
Quick Connect is selected by default. It starts an account-free Cloudflare
Quick Tunnel, captures its temporary trycloudflare.com address, and displays
both the public wss:// endpoint and local tcp://127.0.0.1:8741 endpoint with
one ten-minute, one-use pairing code. No Cloudflare account, domain, route, or
connector token is required. The address changes whenever the gateway restarts,
so use the advanced stable-hostname option for a durable endpoint. Once a client
pairs through either endpoint, connect returns and the gateway keeps running in
the background. Run mobius-gateway connect later to advertise a fresh code while
the gateway remains running.
For that advanced option, enter the intended hostname and connector token.
möbius starts the connector first and waits for pairing; you can then publish the
hostname to http://127.0.0.1:8741 in Cloudflare without the missing-route
failure aborting setup. möbius stores the token in an owner-only file outside
gateway.toml and starts cloudflared with --token-file. The
GitHub binary archives include a pinned cloudflared sidecar; source and
cargo install builds require cloudflared beside mobius-gateway or on
PATH. The gateway also prints a copyable mobius-pair:v1 setup code and, in an
interactive terminal, an iPhone/iPad QR. Both contain only the public endpoint
and short-lived möbius pairing code. They prefill the Apple pairing form for
confirmation and never contain the Cloudflare token.
If the selected state directory already exists, interactive initialization asks for explicit confirmation before stopping the old gateway and deleting its configuration, chats, providers, and paired devices.
For non-interactive setup, keep the token in an owner-only file and use:
Plaintext listeners and clients are restricted to loopback. An iPhone, iPad, or another machine therefore needs a routable TLS endpoint with a publicly trusted certificate whose hostname matches that endpoint:
On iPhone, iPad, or Mac, choose Add gateway and enter the displayed
Gateway address and One-time code. On another terminal client, run the
displayed mobius pair command. Pairing consumes the code and returns a unique
bearer token; Apple clients keep it in Keychain and mobius keeps it in its
owner-only gateway account file. Later connections use that token, not the
one-time code.
To add another device while the gateway is already running, an authenticated
Apple client can open Gateway → Pair another device → Create one-time code;
an authenticated terminal client can run /pair. mobius-gateway connect is
the host-side recovery flow for a stopped gateway.
By default, owner-only state is stored under ~/.mobius/gateway. Set
MOBIUS_GATEWAY_STATE_DIR or pass --state-dir to use another location.
On Linux, run the gateway account without permitted or ambient capabilities;
Bubblewrap rejects a non-root caller that retains them. Hosts that allow user,
PID, mount, and network namespaces but forbid mounting procfs inside a child PID
namespace can set MOBIUS_GATEWAY_SANDBOX_PROC=empty. This keeps PID isolation
and mounts an empty /proc; the default private mode mounts a private procfs.
Provider credential APIs are write-only and never return stored secret values.
Full-access shell commands can use the host filesystem and network while file tools
remain workspace-scoped. Those shell commands can access gateway state, TLS credentials,
stored provider credentials, and any other files or services available to the gateway
account.
The configured-model catalog and new-chat default live in gateway configuration.
The first configured model becomes the default. A new chat copies that default,
then stores its own selected model and runtime recipe beside its durable
checkpoint; changing one chat never changes the catalog, another chat, or its
workspace.
The gateway also owns the extension catalog. Clients may install a standalone
Agent Skill or OpenAI plugin from a credential-free HTTPS Git source. Packages
are stored as content-addressed snapshots and remain inactive until selected for
the default agent or a chat. Executable plugin hooks require explicit review for
the installed package digest. Update and uninstall require deactivation first;
per-workspace plugin data under .mobius/extensions is retained.
Automation may register OpenRouter with a direct credential read from bounded standard input, keeping the key out of arguments and URLs:
|
A trusted OpenRouter-compatible connector can instead remain credentialless:
The command authenticates over the running loopback gateway, is idempotent, and
prints {"provider":"openrouter"} on success. Credentialless mode is rejected
for the direct OpenRouter endpoint and for providers that do not advertise it.
Replacing a registered provider also updates its new-chat default and durable
chat selections before success. The command fails while a resident chat is busy,
so automation can retry without retiring the previous endpoint prematurely.
On macOS or Linux, open the live dashboard or gracefully stop the configured gateway from another terminal:
The no-command form starts the gateway in the background when needed, then
shows every paired device and chat with active entries first, plus configured
providers, editable defaults, and usage. Use Tab plus the arrow, page, or mouse
wheel controls to scroll device and chat history. In Devices, press u or
Delete and confirm to unpair the selected device; the dashboard cannot unpair
its own credential. Press p for provider setup, d for defaults, or q to
leave without stopping the gateway. provider opens the same provider setup
directly. These views use this machine's saved gateway pairing.
Exit verifies the gateway's locked process record before sending
SIGINT and waits up to five seconds for shutdown.
serve --background starts a detached process on macOS or Linux and returns
only after that process owns the gateway process record. Foreground serve
continues to run until interrupted. Use serve --background for ordinary
restarts after at least one client is paired.
If every client token is lost, stop the gateway and run the supervised pairing flow again; existing paired clients remain valid:
The internal scheduler accepts standard five-field cron expressions. Scheduled
runs use durable möbius sessions and never install system crontab entries or
spawn a child CLI. A frontend starts assisted setup with the protocol's cron
setup operation (/cron new [task] in the terminal client); ordinary chat is
not authorized to create schedules. Model-confirmed task files are owner-only
under the gateway state directory. Disabling scheduling for a chat removes its setup tool and
prompt but does not delete or pause existing schedules; history stays visible and the capability
state remains available to management views while agent scheduling is off.
With no clients and no registered cron tasks,
the gateway exits after 72 hours; any scheduled task disables that idle timer.
Stopping the gateway manually also stops scheduled work, and missed runs are not
replayed after restart.