Slowave background services: daemon, worker, and backup

Three services power Slowave at runtime — an HTTP MCP daemon, a consolidation worker, and a daily backup. Learn what each does and how to verify them.

slowave setup installs three background services automatically: an HTTP MCP daemon that all clients connect to, a background worker that consolidates raw events into searchable memory, and a daily backup that snapshots the SQLite database. On macOS, services are installed as launchd user agents. On Linux, as systemd user services. On Windows, as Task Scheduler tasks. All three start automatically after setup and restart if they stop.

The three services

HTTP MCP daemon

Serves the slowave_* tools at http://127.0.0.1:8766/mcp. Every connected AI client talks to this single local endpoint.

Background worker

Runs consolidation offline — transforms raw session events into searchable episodes, prototypes, schemas, and relations.

Daily backup

Takes a gzip snapshot of the SQLite database once per day. Keeps the last 7 backups in the runtime root’s backups/ directory.

HTTP MCP daemon

The daemon is the only network-facing component of Slowave. It binds to 127.0.0.1:8766 and serves MCP over HTTP. All AI clients — Claude Code, Cline, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenCode, Codex, and Claude Desktop — connect to this single endpoint rather than spawning per-session subprocesses.

The MCP config block written to every client (except Claude Desktop) points here:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "slowave": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:8766/mcp"
    }
  }
}

macOS

macOS — launchd

Item	Value
Service file	~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.slowave.daemon.plist
Started with	launchctl load
Auto-start	RunAtLoad + KeepAlive

Verify:

launchctl list | grep slowave

Check logs:

# Logs are written to the runtime root's logs/ directory
slowave doctor   # prints the effective runtime root

Linux

Linux — systemd

Item	Value
Service file	~/.config/systemd/user/slowave-daemon.service
Started with	systemctl --user enable --now slowave-daemon
Auto-start	Restart=always

Verify:

systemctl --user status slowave-daemon

Check logs:

journalctl --user -u slowave-daemon

Windows

Windows — Task Scheduler

Item	Value
Task name	SlowaveDaemon
Runs as	Current interactive user
Auto-start	At logon + repeating every 5 minutes

Verify:

Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName SlowaveDaemon

Background worker

The background worker runs consolidation offline, separate from the daemon and without any LLM API key. It transforms raw events stored by connected agents into the higher-level memory structures (episodes, prototypes, schemas, relations) that slowave_activate and slowave_recall retrieve.

macOS

macOS — launchd

Item	Value
Service file	~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.slowave.worker.plist
Started with	launchctl load
Consolidation interval	Every 300 seconds

Verify:

launchctl list | grep slowave

Linux

Linux — systemd

Item	Value
Service file	~/.config/systemd/user/slowave-worker.service
Started with	systemctl --user enable --now slowave-worker
Consolidation interval	Every 300 seconds

Verify:

systemctl --user status slowave-worker

Windows

Windows — Task Scheduler

Item	Value
Task name	SlowaveWorker
Runs as	Current interactive user
Auto-start	At logon + repeating every 5 minutes

Verify:

Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName SlowaveWorker

Daily backup

The backup service takes a gzip snapshot of the SQLite database once per day and stores it in the runtime root’s backups/ directory. It retains the last 7 backups automatically. Backup archives are intentionally preserved by slowave purge so memories can be recovered after a purge — delete the backups/ directory manually only when you are certain those archives are no longer needed.

macOS

macOS — launchd

Item	Value
Service file	~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.slowave.backup.plist
Schedule	Daily at 03:00 (StartCalendarInterval)

Verify:

launchctl list com.slowave.backup

Linux

Linux — systemd timer

Item	Value
Service file	~/.config/systemd/user/slowave-backup.service
Timer file	~/.config/systemd/user/slowave-backup.timer
Schedule	Daily (OnCalendar=daily), persistent

Verify:

systemctl --user status slowave-backup.timer

Windows

Windows — Task Scheduler

Item	Value
Task name	SlowaveBackup
Schedule	Daily

Verify:

Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName SlowaveBackup

Runtime data location

Slowave stores all runtime data (database, logs, backups, PID file, setup sentinel) under a single per-user root selected by platformdirs:

Platform	Default runtime root
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/slowave
Linux	$XDG_DATA_HOME/slowave (normally ~/.local/share/slowave)
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\slowave

Set SLOWAVE_HOME to relocate the entire runtime tree (useful for CI, containers, or portable installs). SLOWAVE_DB is a legacy override for the exact database path; setting both variables at once is an error.

Run slowave doctor to print the effective runtime root and database path on your current machine.

Verifying all services at once

slowave doctor

slowave doctor checks daemon health, lists detected clients and their configuration status, and prints the effective runtime root and database path. Run it any time you are unsure whether Slowave is fully operational.