Crate nika_daemon 

Nika native daemon — background services for secrets, jobs, watch, and cache.

The daemon is Nika’s optional background brain. nika run works without it, but the daemon adds persistent features: keychain secrets, job scheduling, file watching, and LLM response caching.

Architecture

• Single binary: nika daemon start uses the same binary
• Unix socket IPC: ~/.nika/daemon/nika.sock
• Wire format: 4-byte big-endian length + JSON payload
• tokio-native async runtime

Crate Independence

This crate depends on nika-core only (for path constants and provider info). It does NOT depend on nika-engine — the daemon is lightweight.

Re-exports

pub use client::read_auth_token;

pub use client::ConnectedClient;

pub use client::DaemonClient;

pub use error::DaemonError;

pub use error::DaemonResult;

pub use protocol::DaemonRequest;

pub use protocol::DaemonResponse;

pub use server::DaemonConfig;

pub use server::DaemonServer;

Modules

client

Daemon client — connects to the daemon over Unix socket.

error

Daemon error types.

events

Event bus — broadcast channel for daemon events.

install

Daemon auto-start installation — launchd (macOS) + systemd (Linux).

lifecycle

Daemon lifecycle — PID file, daemonize, signal handling.

protocol

IPC protocol — message types and wire format.

server

Daemon server — accepts connections on Unix socket and routes requests.

services

Daemon services — secrets, jobs, watch, cache.

storage

SQLite storage layer for jobs and cache.

Constants

NIKA_HOME_ENV

Environment variable to override the Nika home directory.

Functions

daemon_dir

Returns the daemon directory (~/.nika/daemon/).

daemon_log_path

Returns the daemon log file path (~/.nika/daemon/nika.log).

daemon_pid_path

Returns the daemon PID file path (~/.nika/daemon/nika.pid).

daemon_socket_path

Returns the daemon socket path (~/.nika/daemon/nika.sock).

daemon_token_path

Returns the daemon auth token file path (~/.nika/daemon/.token).