# HTTP API Reference

Codeman's HTTP API is a **stable contract** as of 1.0 — see
[`versioning-policy.md`](versioning-policy.md) for the SemVer guarantee. This page
defines the response envelope, status codes, error codes, versioning, and the SSE
event channel.

## Versioning

- The stable, public surface is served under **`/api/v1/...`**. Pin external
  clients to this prefix.
- The unversioned **`/api/...`** paths are a permanent alias of the current
  version (what the bundled web UI uses). They are kept working, but new external
  integrations should use `/api/v1`.
- Breaking changes to the contract ship under a new prefix (`/api/v2`); `/api/v1`
  keeps its semantics. Additive changes (new endpoints, new optional fields, new
  error codes) are non-breaking and may appear in a minor release.
- The implementation rewrites `/api/v1/*` → `/api/*` at the server level
  (`rewriteApiV1Url` in `src/web/server.ts`).

## Response envelope

Every JSON response uses one uniform envelope, applied centrally by a
`preSerialization` hook (`src/web/server.ts`) — handlers return bare data and the
hook wraps it:

**Success** — HTTP `2xx`:

```json
{ "success": true, "data": <payload> }
```

`data` is the endpoint's payload (object, array, or value). Endpoints with no
payload return `{ "success": true, "data": {} }`.

**Error** — HTTP `4xx`/`5xx`:

```json
{ "success": false, "error": "human-readable message", "errorCode": "NOT_FOUND" }
```

`ApiResponse<T>` in `src/types/api.ts` is the canonical type.

> Non-JSON endpoints are exempt from the envelope: `GET /api/sessions/:id/file-raw`,
> `GET /api/sessions/:id/tail-file` (SSE), `GET /api/download`,
> `GET /api/screenshots/:name`, `GET /q/:code` (QR redirect),
> `GET /html-view/:cap/*` (a [rendered HTML file](#rendered-html-files) and its
> assets), and the `GET /ws/sessions/:id/terminal` WebSocket upgrade.
>
> **Deprecated:** `POST /api/screenshots`, `GET /api/screenshots` and
> `GET /api/screenshots/:name` keep working but log a one-time warning on first
> use. They are removed in a later MAJOR, after at least one MINOR release that
> carries this warning (see `docs/versioning-policy.md`). To hand
> a file to an agent, use `POST /api/sessions/:id/paste-image`, which saves it into
> that session's workspace.

> The [agent wait endpoints](#long-polling-agent-wait) use the normal envelope but
> are the only JSON endpoints that deliberately **hold the connection open**, for up
> to 600 s. Proxy operators and HTTP clients with a global read timeout need to know
> that before pointing them at Codeman.

⚠️ **A `401` is the one status that is not an envelope.** Authentication is rejected
in a request hook, before any handler runs, and it replies with the bare string
`Unauthorized` (`Unauthorized: hook secret required` on the hook path) plus
`WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Codeman"`. There is no `success`, no `error`, and no
`errorCode`, because the wrapping hook only wraps object payloads. So a client that
pipes every response straight into a JSON parser dies with a parse error rather than
reporting an auth failure, which is a confusing way to discover that a password is
set. Branch on the HTTP status **before** parsing.

## Error codes → HTTP status

The single source of truth is `ErrorStatus` / `httpStatusForErrorCode()` in
`src/types/api.ts`. Clients should branch on `errorCode` (stable) and may rely on
the HTTP status.

| `errorCode` | HTTP | Meaning |
|-------------|------|---------|
| `INVALID_INPUT` | 400 | Malformed request / failed validation |
| `UNAUTHORIZED` | 401 | Authentication required or failed |
| `FORBIDDEN` | 403 | Signed in, but not allowed (e.g. a non-admin calling an admin-only route in multi-user mode) |
| `PASSWORD_CHANGE_REQUIRED` | 403 | Multi-user: the user must change their password before anything else |
| `NOT_FOUND` | 404 | Resource does not exist |
| `USER_NOT_FOUND` | 404 | Multi-user: no user with that name |
| `SESSION_BUSY` | 409 | Session is busy |
| `CONFLICT` | 409 | Conflicts with current state (e.g. already running) |
| `ALREADY_EXISTS` | 409 | Resource already exists |
| `USER_EXISTS` | 409 | Multi-user: a user with that name already exists |
| `LAST_ADMIN` | 409 | Multi-user: refusing to demote, disable or delete the last enabled admin |
| `OPERATION_FAILED` | 422 | Well-formed but could not be completed |
| `RATE_LIMITED` | 429 | Too many requests |
| `INTERNAL_ERROR` | 500 | Unexpected server error |

Adding a new error code is non-breaking; removing or renaming one is a major change.

## Cron jobs

Saved jobs and their launch history are separate from the legacy `/api/scheduled`
duration-bounded loops. Use `/api/v1/cron/...` in external clients; `/api/cron/...`
is the unversioned alias. These routes use the response envelope above; the table
lists the value inside `data` on success.

| Method | Path | Request body | Response `data` |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GET | `/api/v1/cron/jobs` | None | `CronJob[]` |
| POST | `/api/v1/cron/jobs` | Full job definition below | `{ job: CronJob }` |
| GET | `/api/v1/cron/jobs/:id` | None | `CronJob` |
| PUT | `/api/v1/cron/jobs/:id` | Partial job definition | `{ job: CronJob }` |
| DELETE | `/api/v1/cron/jobs/:id` | None | `{}` |
| PUT | `/api/v1/cron/jobs/:id/enabled` | `{ enabled: boolean }` | `{ job: CronJob }` |
| POST | `/api/v1/cron/jobs/:id/run` | None | `{ run: CronJobRun, activeAgents: number }` |
| GET | `/api/v1/cron/jobs/:id/runs` | None | `CronJobRun[]` |
| GET | `/api/v1/cron/runs` | None | `CronJobRun[]` |

### Job request fields

The create body requires `name`, `agentType`, `workingDir`, `promptMode`,
`inputMode`, `scheduleType`, `enabled`, and `concurrencyPolicy`. Additional fields
are required according to the selected prompt and schedule:

| Field | Type / validation |
| --- | --- |
| `name` | String, 1–200 characters |
| `agentType` | A supported session mode (including `shell`) |
| `workingDir` | Existing, allowed working-directory path |
| `launchCommand` | Optional single-line string, at most 2000 characters; for shell jobs |
| `promptMode` | `inline_text` or `prompt_file_path` |
| `promptText` | Required for `inline_text`; nonempty single-line string, at most 100000 characters |
| `promptFilePath` | Required for `prompt_file_path`; absolute path inside `workingDir` to a regular file, at most 1 MiB, read when the job fires |
| `inputMode` | `paste` or `typed` |
| `scheduleType` | `once`, `interval`, `daily`, or `weekly` |
| `runAt` | Required for `once`; positive integer Unix timestamp in milliseconds |
| `intervalMinutes` | Required for `interval`; integer from 1 to 525600 |
| `dailyTime` | Required for `daily`; `HH:MM` in server-local time |
| `weeklyDays` | Required for `weekly`; 1–7 weekday integers, 0 (Sunday) through 6 (Saturday) |
| `weeklyTime` | Required for `weekly`; `HH:MM` in server-local time |
| `enabled` | Boolean |
| `concurrencyPolicy` | `warn_only` or `skip_if_same_agent_running`; scheduled runs only |
| `autoClosePreviousSession` | Optional boolean, default `true`; ignored for `once` |
| `notes` | Optional string, at most 2000 characters |

`PUT /jobs/:id` accepts any subset of these fields, then validates the merged job.
When changing `promptMode` or `scheduleType`, supply the fields the new mode needs.
`Run Now` works even when the job is disabled, bypasses the scheduled concurrency
policy, and does not change the schedule. `activeAgents` counts live sessions of
the same agent type, excluding sessions created by this job.
For recurring jobs with `autoClosePreviousSession` enabled (the default), `Run Now`
also closes the previous run's session before launching, even if it is still working.

### Job and run response fields

`CronJob` contains the request fields plus server-maintained `id`, optional
`owner` (multi-user mode), `createdAt`, `updatedAt`, `lastRunAt`, `nextRunAt`,
`lastStatus`, `lastDueKey`, and optional `completedOnce`. Times are Unix
milliseconds; `lastRunAt`, `nextRunAt`, `lastStatus`, and `lastDueKey` can be `null`.
`lastDueKey` is an opaque internal duplicate-launch guard, not a stable API format.

`CronJobRun` contains `id`, `cronJobId`, nullable `sessionId` and `sessionName`,
`startedAt`, nullable `finishedAt`, `status`, optional `errorMessage`,
`triggerType` (`scheduled` or `manual_run_now`), and nullable `createdSessionUrl`.
Run times are also Unix milliseconds. Status is one of `created`,
`session_started`, `prompt_sent`, `failed`, or `skipped`.

Prompt delivery continues asynchronously after session launch, so `Run Now` can
return `session_started` before the prompt is sent. Read run history for subsequent
updates, but do not assume a terminal status will follow: if the session is closed
during the readiness wait or the server restarts before delivery, the run can remain
`session_started` indefinitely with `finishedAt: null`.
`finishedAt` refers to the launch/prompt-delivery attempt, **not completion
of the agent's task**; `prompt_sent` does not prove that the task succeeded.

In multi-user mode, list/history endpoints filter to accessible jobs. An unknown
or inaccessible job returns `NOT_FOUND`. Job creation and updates can return
`403 FORBIDDEN` for a working directory outside the owner's workspace or a shell /
launch-command job without the required privilege grant. Invalid definitions or
working directories return `INVALID_INPUT`; launch/delivery failures are recorded
on the run, so inspect its `status` and `errorMessage` even after an HTTP success.

See [Cron Jobs](wiki/Cron-Jobs.md) for the UI, scheduling, and prompt-file rules.
See the [complete cron guide](cron-guide.md) for the `cron:runCreated` and
`cron:runUpdated` SSE events.

## Long-polling (agent wait)

Three calls block until something happens instead of answering immediately. They
exist because SSE is Codeman's only other "tell me when" channel, and an agent
driving the API from a shell tool cannot practically hold a stream and parse
events inline.

| Call | Blocks until |
|------|--------------|
| `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/wait` | one of a set of lifecycle signals fires |
| `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/wait-output` | a literal string appears in the session's output |
| `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/input` with `wait` | the input is delivered **and then** a signal fires |

`POST .../input` with `wait` is not the same as a `POST` followed by a separate
`GET .../wait`. It registers the waiter **before** writing, which closes the window
in which a separate wait sees the session still idle from the previous turn and
answers instantly with the wrong turn's result. Use it whenever you send a prompt
and want to know when that prompt is done.

### Three semantics that break callers who assume otherwise

**1. A timeout is HTTP `200`, not an error.** A wait that ends without its signal
returns `{"success":true, ...,"wait":{"timedOut":true,"signal":null}}`. The
intended pattern is a client-side loop over short waits, because `tailscale serve`
and cloudflared can both cut an idle connection, and turning every poll boundary
into a `4xx` would make that loop indistinguishable from a real failure. `408` is
auto-retried by several clients (silently doubling the polling load), `504` is what
a genuine tunnel failure looks like, and `204` cannot carry `waitedMs` / `status` /
`limitPaused`. Reserve error handling for the four codes in the table below.

**2. `stop` fires only for `claude` (and `deepseek`) sessions, `blocked` also for
`codex`.** Both come from Claude Code hooks, and no other mode installs them: `shell`
runs no agent, and the external CLIs render their own TUIs and post no hooks
(`deepseek`'s status bridge reports the same two, see its own docs). The one exception
is `blocked` on `codex`: Codeman reads codex's approval, question and trust dialogs off
its screen and raises `blocked` for them (see [Signals](#signals)). For every other mode
only `idle`, `working` and `exit` are accepted. `exit` is dependable everywhere; `idle` and
`working` are screen-checked for `opencode`, `gemini`, `pi`, `omp` and `antigravity` (as for `claude` and
`codex`) and not guaranteed elsewhere: see the caveats under [Signals](#signals) before
building on `idle`.
Requesting a signal the session can never emit **explicitly** is a `400` (`stop` on
`codex` included); omitting `until` never fails, the server just drops them from the
default set and echoes the narrowed set back as `wait.until`. Three more places hooks can go
missing even in `claude` mode: a **Docker case** needs
`CODEMAN_DOCKER_BRIDGE_HOOKS=1`, since a container cannot reach a loopback-bound
Codeman (without it, only `idle` / `working` / `exit` work); a **remote-SSH
case** runs the agent on another host, whose hooks may never reach this server at
all; and a case whose hook config was written by **Codeman < 1.13.0 against an
`--https` install** carries hook curls without `-k`, which TLS-fail silently (the
hook line ends in `|| true`). Codeman now writes `curl -sk` and repairs a stale
case config the next time a session starts in that case. When in doubt, ask for
`stop,idle,exit` so a session without hooks still resolves on the heuristic
signal.

**3. `from=now` does not mean "printed after you asked".** tmux repaints the visible
screen on attach, on resize, and on any TUI redraw, and a repaint arrives as
ordinary output, so text that was already on screen can satisfy a fresh wait. This
was observed live: a marker echoed a minute earlier matched instantly on a new
`from=now` wait. It is inherent to running the agent under a multiplexer, so the
contract is a **marker unique to each call** (`MARK="DONE_$RANDOM"`, send
`echo $MARK`, then wait on `$MARK`), never a generic string like `BUILD OK`.

### Signals

| Signal | Source | Actually fires for |
|--------|--------|--------------------|
| `idle` | the session's own `idle` event | `claude`: yes, on ❯-prompt detection after activity. `codex`, `opencode`, `gemini`, `pi`, `omp`, `antigravity`: yes, the same screen check through the prompt marker and working line each declares (`capabilities.workDetect`); an `antigravity` session waiting on a shell-command approval stays `working` until it is answered. `shell`: **once only**, ~500 ms after start, and never again. Other external CLIs (`grok`, `deepseek`): not guaranteed (they render their own TUIs and readiness is output stabilization) |
| `working` | the session's own `working` event | `claude`, plus `codex`, `opencode`, `gemini`, `pi`, `omp` and `antigravity` through the working line each declares. Elsewhere not guaranteed: it rests on generic output heuristics such as a braille spinner glyph |
| `stop` | the Claude Code `stop` hook, the definitive end-of-turn signal | `claude` (and `deepseek`) only |
| `blocked` | a `permission_prompt` or `elicitation_dialog` hook; on `codex`, a dialog read off its screen | `claude`, `deepseek` and `codex`; on `claude` rarer than it looks: see below |
| `exit` | no process is behind the session | every mode |

`stop` is the signal to orchestrate on where it exists; `idle` is a heuristic
fallback that can flap mid-turn when a spinner pauses. The default set when `until`
is omitted is `stop,idle,exit` (`exit` is in there so a worker that crashes resolves
the wait promptly instead of burning the caller's whole timeout on something that
can no longer happen). On a `claude` worker, prefer an explicit `until=stop,exit`
once the session is up: the default set's `idle` also resolves on a spinner pause,
and on a fresh session the **startup** `idle` (emitted when the CLI first comes up)
can land inside your first wait window and report a turn that never ran. That
startup `idle` is held while Claude's workspace-trust dialog is on screen (inside
the 90 s startup window), because the dialog's own ❯ is not a composer.

⚠️ **`exit` means "nothing is running", which includes "not started yet".** The
server answers from `pid === null` plus a mux-layer pane-death probe, and that
covers a session that exited — including a worker that died *inside* its tmux pane
while the local attach client (and therefore `pid`) lives on — one that was
detached, and one that was **created but never started**. So the first wait
after `POST /api/v1/sessions` returns `{"signal":"exit","immediate":true}` in
milliseconds, and reading that as "the worker died" is wrong: it means start it, or
wait for it to come up. `status` is carried alongside so nothing is hidden. The
alternative (trusting `status`) is worse, because a dead PTY parks the session at
`status: "idle"`, which would answer the default wait with `immediate: true` for a
worker that has crashed. A worker dying while a wait is parked resolves it within
a few seconds (a background death-watcher), not at the timeout.

⚠️ **`blocked` is reachable less often than the table suggests.** It fires on two
hooks, and the default configuration suppresses one of them: Codeman spawns claude
with `--dangerously-skip-permissions`, so permission prompts do not happen unless the
instance is switched to the `auto` Claude mode (App Settings), or the caller is a
multi-user account without the bypass grant, which is forced to `--permission-mode
auto`. What does still fire under the default is `elicitation_dialog`, the agent
asking the user a question. So `until=stop,blocked,exit` is a reasonable belt on a
long turn, but a worker that never comes back is far more likely to be working than
blocked, and polling `blocked` alone will sit at its timeout.

**`blocked` on `codex` is read off the screen**, because codex has no hooks and is
launched with its approvals on unless `codexConfig.dangerouslyBypassApprovals` is set
(`codexConfig.networkAccess` opens the sandbox's network and does not change that).
A codex pane showing a command, edit or network approval, a question (`request_user_input`)
or the startup trust prompt raises `blocked` (plus the red alert, push and webhook a Claude
`permission_prompt` raises, alert-only: answer it in the terminal), and the session reads
`idle` while it is up. Unlike a hook, this is a level the server keeps reading, so a wait
for `blocked` that arrives while the dialog is already up answers at once
(`immediate: true`); a wait that did not ask for `blocked` is unaffected. It clears 2 to 4 s
after the dialog leaves the screen. `stop` stays a `400` on codex: nothing on a screen says a
turn ended.

⚠️ **On a `shell` session, only `exit` and marker-matching are dependable.** A shell
session emits its one `idle` at startup and then stays `status: "idle"` forever,
whatever the pane is doing, so it never emits a *transition*. Since send-and-wait
requires a transition (and so does `fresh=1`), both can only time out there:
a documented default `wait` on a shell worker running `sleep 4` times out at the
full 25 s. Synchronize hook-less sessions with `wait-output` and a unique marker
instead. The same caution applies to the external CLIs.

### Readiness is not a signal

Nothing here reports "the agent is ready for a prompt", and no combination of
`until`/`fresh` synthesizes one. A freshly created session reads as `exit` (above),
and a `claude` worker in a brand-new case comes up on the CLI's **trust dialog**,
which contains a ❯ of its own. A prompt posted at that moment is typed into the
dialog, and its `\r` confirms the highlighted `No, exit`: the CLI quits and the
pane dies, so send-and-wait resolves on `exit`. Codeman holds the session's `idle`
while the dialog is on screen, so waiting for `idle` before prompting no longer
clears too early, but that still does not make `idle` a readiness signal.

The reliable sequence is: poll `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id` until `.data.pid` is
non-null, then `wait-output` for the composer's own marker (`bypass`, the status
bar of a CLI spawned in bypass mode) with a short timeout, handling the trust
dialog only as the bounded fallback.

⚠️ **The fallback is not a bare `\r`.** Claude Code 2.1.252 unnumbered the dialog's
options, reversed them and highlights `No, exit`, so an Enter sent blind quits the
CLI and the pane dies seconds after the spawn. Read the `❯` marker off the current
frame (`GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/terminal?full=1`), send `ESC [ B` while it is on
`No, exit`, re-read, and confirm only once it is on `Yes, I trust this folder`.
Reading the current frame is also what keeps this correct on later runs: the dialog
text stays in the terminal buffer for the life of the session, so a `trust` probe
with `from=buffer` keeps matching long after the dialog is gone. A worked version is in
[`extending-codeman.md`](extending-codeman.md#seam-3-http-api-and-cli).

### `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/wait`

| Param | Type | Default | Notes |
|-------|------|---------|-------|
| `until` | comma-separated list of `idle,working,stop,blocked,exit` | `stop,idle,exit` | resolves on the first to fire. An unknown token is a `400` naming it, never a silent fallback |
| `timeout` | positive integer ms | `60000` | **validated first, clamped second.** `0`, a negative value and a fractional value are all `400`s, not clamps; a valid value outside `[1000, 600000]` is clamped and echoed as `wait.timeoutMs` |
| `fresh` | `0` \| `1` \| `false` \| `true` | `0` | `1` requires an actual transition, ignoring the state at call time |

```bash
curl -s "$API/api/v1/sessions/$SID/wait?until=stop,exit&timeout=60000"
```

Both GET wait routes answer with `Cache-Control: no-store`, because the documented
pattern polls one identical URL in a loop and a cached `{"timedOut":true}` would
turn that loop into a busy spin. `POST .../input` sends no cache header (it is a
POST, which is not heuristically cacheable).

⚠️ **Unknown query parameters are ignored, not rejected**, with one exception
(`regex`, below). In particular `match=` on `/wait` is silently dropped and you get
a plain signal wait, so check the endpoint path before blaming the parameters.

### `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/wait-output`

| Param | Type | Default | Notes |
|-------|------|---------|-------|
| `match` | literal string, 1 to 200 chars | required | substring match against the PTY stream with ANSI escapes stripped. A match spanning two PTY chunks is found |
| `nocase` | `0` \| `1` \| `false` \| `true` | `0` | case-insensitive compare. The returned snippet keeps the terminal's original casing |
| `from` | `now` \| `buffer` | `now` | `buffer` scans the tail of the existing terminal buffer (bounded, 256 KB by default) before blocking |
| `timeout` | positive integer ms | `60000` | same validation and clamp as `/wait` |

**Matching is literal, never a pattern.** A `regex` parameter is rejected with a
`400` rather than ignored, so a caller that assumed otherwise finds out immediately
instead of waiting on the wrong thing. The reasoning is in
[`architecture-invariants.md`](architecture-invariants.md#agent-wait-primitives).

#### What the matcher actually sees

The matcher scans the raw PTY stream, **normalized**: ANSI escape sequences are
stripped — CSI, OSC, and the charset-designation escapes a stock bash prompt emits
on every line (`ESC ( B`), so `match=tnode:` matches a prompt that renders
`…@tnode:` — a partial escape arriving at a chunk boundary is held back until its
tail arrives, and a match may straddle PTY chunks: `printf STRAD; sleep 1; printf
DLEQQ` is matchable as `STRADDLEQQ` (all measured live). Three caveats remain:

⚠️ **It is still the byte stream, not the rendered pane.** `GET .../terminal`
answers from a tmux screen capture (`data.source: "mux-visible"`), the finished
picture; the matcher sees the stream that painted it. For linear output the two
agree once escapes are stripped, but a full-screen TUI composes its picture with
cursor positioning, so what the pane shows and what the stream carries can differ.
Seeing your string in `terminal?tail=` makes a match likely, not guaranteed.

⚠️ **A TUI's text can arrive without its spaces.** Claude Code positions words
with cursor moves rather than printing spaces, so screen text can reach the
matcher as `Quicksafetycheck:Isthisaprojectyoucreated...`. Whether a given phrase
keeps its spaces depends on how the TUI happened to draw it (measured: `I trust
this folder` matched, `Quick safety check` did not), so a multi-word `match`
against a TUI pane is unreliable rather than impossible. Match a **single
space-free token**, ideally one you printed yourself. Plain command output (a
shell worker, an `echo`) keeps its spaces.

⚠️ **The returned `snippet` is a rendering of the matched text, not a quotation of
it.** It is cut from the same normalized stream the match ran against, then
cleaned for display: remaining raw control bytes are removed (an agent pipes the
snippet into its own terminal, so a worker's bytes must not be able to reset that
display) and blank runs are collapsed. A printable needle that matched will appear
in it; a needle containing control bytes or a blank run may not survive verbatim.

```bash
MARK="DONE_$RANDOM"
curl -sG "$API/api/v1/sessions/$SID/wait-output" \
  --data-urlencode "match=$MARK" --data-urlencode 'timeout=120000'
```

Build the query with `-G --data-urlencode` rather than by hand: a `+` in a
hand-written query string decodes to a space.

### `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/input` with `wait`

Two optional fields on the existing endpoint:

| Field | Type | Notes |
|-------|------|-------|
| `wait` | `true` or the same comma grammar as `until` | `true` means the default signal set. Omitted keeps the historical fire-and-forget behavior, unchanged. `null`, `false` and an empty string are all read as **absent**, not as an error and not as "wait for the default" |
| `waitTimeout` | positive integer ms | same validation **and** clamp as `timeout`: `0`, a negative and a fractional value are `400`s, anything valid is clamped into `[1000, 600000]` and echoed as `wait.timeoutMs` |

Both are `nullish`, so an explicit `null` from `JSON.stringify` is accepted as
"absent" rather than failing validation. That is deliberate: `.optional()` would
reject it, which has shipped as a real bug twice.

The input must end with `\r` (a real carriage return in the JSON string): Enter is
sent only when the input contains one, so text without it is typed onto the
worker's prompt but never submitted, and the wait then runs its full timeout on a
turn that never started. Verified live; this is the most common silent failure on
this endpoint.

Input tagged with `clientId` and `seq`, waiting or not, answers `409 CONFLICT`
with nothing written while an experimental guarded submit holds the session's
input lease, or input held behind it is still being written (a few milliseconds;
see [guarded input](#experimental-bounded-agent-inspection-and-guarded-input)).
Retry it. Untagged input is held instead and written in arrival order once the
lease is released.

A **plain prompt** (printable text followed by exactly one `\r`, nothing else) is
delivered through tmux even without `useMux`: the text is typed, Enter is pressed as
a separate key, and the server re-presses Enter while the prompt is still visibly
sitting on the composer. Written straight into the pane in one piece, a prompt of
about a hundred characters or more is taken as a paste by Claude Code, its `\r`
becomes a newline, and the prompt stays unsent (measured on 2.1.283). Any other
input (escape sequences, a bracketed-paste frame, a line feed, a bare `\r`) keeps
the raw write, and an explicit `"useMux": false` forces it.
With `"useMux": true`, a line feed is kept: the text goes in as one bracketed paste
(`\r\n` read as `\n`, leading and trailing line breaks dropped), then Enter if the
input carried a `\r`; a pane that has not enabled bracketed paste receives each line
break as a carriage return and runs the lines as they arrive. The check that
re-presses a stranded Enter cannot reliably recognise a multi-line paste, so a long
multi-line prompt to a just-started agent is still safer in a file it is told to read.

```bash
curl -s -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$SID/input" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"input":"run the tests\r","useMux":true,"clientId":"agent-1","seq":1,
       "wait":"stop","waitTimeout":600000}'
```

A **tagged duplicate** (a `clientId` + `seq` pair the server has already applied)
still honors `wait`, because the caller's question is unanswered, but it answers
from the session's current state rather than requiring a new transition: the
original turn may be long over. It comes back as
`"delivered": false, "duplicate": true`.

**Wake-on-LAN hosts** (`docs/remote-sessions.md` §Wake-on-LAN): when the session's
remote host has a wake target and is asleep, the non-wait form answers `200` with
`{"buffered": true}` — the bytes are held and flushed after the host is back — or
`{"buffered": true, "dropped": true}` for a chunk over the 4 KB wake buffer, which
is gone (never delivered as a fragment). Both fields are additive to the historical
bare `{}`. With `wait`, the route blocks on the wake instead and answers
`422 OPERATION_FAILED` ("did not come back after a wake-on-LAN request — nothing was
sent") when the host never returns, rather than writing into the stalled pane and
reporting `delivered:true` plus a timeout.

Two endpoints back that flow directly, both scoped to one session's remote host and
both refusing a session that is not remote (`400 INVALID_INPUT`):

| Method | Path | Purpose |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `GET` | `/api/sessions/:id/reachability` | Whether the session's remote host answers SSH right now, plus whether a wake target is configured. Read-only: it never wakes. `{"reachable": true\|false\|null, "wakeConfigured": "mac"\|"command"\|"none"}`, where `null` means the answer is unknown (a proxied host, where a TCP probe proves nothing). |
| `POST` | `/api/sessions/:id/wake` | Wake the host and wait for it to accept SSH again, bounded by the request budget. `422 OPERATION_FAILED` when it does not come back; `400 INVALID_INPUT` with "No wake-on-LAN target configured for this host" when nothing is set. |

⚠️ Waking is deliberately reachable only from an explicit user action (this route, a
session create/attach, or typing into a sleeping session). No watcher, dropped-session
handler or boot-recovery path may wake a host, or a suspended machine would be woken
again seconds after every suspend; `test/remote-wake.test.ts` pins that as an import
fence around `src/remote-wake.ts`.

### Response

All three nest the wait result under `data.wait`, so one client helper works against
any of them:

```json
{ "success": true, "data": {
  "sessionId": "28325fd3-caa7-4178-82bf-87dfebf0f464",
  "status": "idle",
  "limitPaused": false,
  "wait": {
    "signal": "stop", "until": ["stop", "idle", "exit"],
    "timedOut": false, "immediate": false, "ended": false, "aborted": false,
    "waitedMs": 8421, "timeoutMs": 60000
  }
}}
```

`POST .../input` returns the same `wait` object alongside `delivered`, `duplicate`,
`status` and `limitPaused`. `POST .../input` **without** `wait` is unchanged and
still returns `{"success": true, "data": {}}`.

⚠️ `delivered: false` has **two** meanings, and they must be told apart by
`duplicate`: with `duplicate: true` the input was suppressed as an already-applied
redelivery (harmless, the turn it refers to may be long over), while with
`duplicate: false` the **write failed** (typically no PTY behind the session). A
client that reads `delivered === false` as "duplicate" silently treats a failed send
as a success.

| Field | Type | Meaning |
|-------|------|---------|
| `wait.signal` | signal \| `null` | the signal that fired (`/wait` and `/input` only) |
| `wait.until` | array of signals | what the server actually waited on, after narrowing the default set for the session's mode (`/wait` and `/input` only) |
| `wait.matched` | boolean | the string appeared (`/wait-output` only) |
| `wait.match` | string | the literal that was searched for (`/wait-output` only) |
| `wait.snippet` | string \| `null` | bounded window of output around the match, blank runs collapsed for readability (`/wait-output` only) |
| `wait.timedOut` | boolean | the wait hit its timeout. Still a `200` |
| `wait.immediate` | boolean | the condition already held at call time, so nothing was waited for (`waitedMs` is 0) |
| `wait.ended` | boolean | the session went away (deleted or torn down) before the condition was met |
| `wait.aborted` | boolean | the client hung up, so the waiter was released without resolving — and by that definition a client never reads `true`. When the **server** abandons a wait itself (send-and-wait against a session with no PTY), it answers in about a millisecond with `ended: true`, `delivered: false`, `duplicate: false` and `aborted: false`: `delivered`/`ended` carry that story, and `aborted` stays the transport flag. Present for completeness; treat a `true` as "this wait answered nothing", never as an outcome |
| `wait.waitedMs` | number | wall-clock ms actually spent waiting |
| `wait.timeoutMs` | number | the timeout **after clamping**, which is what was applied |
| `status` | `SessionStatus` | the session's status after the wait, so a caller that timed out still learns where things stand |
| `limitPaused` | boolean | the session is paused on a usage limit and will emit nothing until its reset, so a timeout here is expected rather than a stall worth retrying hard |

Read the outcome by discriminator, in this order:

1. `wait.signal !== null` (or `wait.matched === true`): the thing happened.
2. `wait.timedOut`: a poll boundary. Loop again.
3. `wait.ended` or `wait.aborted`: the wait answered nothing, because the session is
   gone or was never running. Re-check the session instead of looping.

`wait.immediate` is not a fourth outcome: it rides along with the first one and
means the condition already held at call time, so nothing was actually waited for.
If that is not what you meant, you wanted `fresh=1` or the send-and-wait form. Note
that `{"signal":"exit","immediate":true}` on a session you just created is the
not-started-yet case, not a crash.

**The timeout is clamped, so read it back.** A request for 1800000 ms is silently
reduced to the server's ceiling (600000 ms by default, operator-tunable), and a
request for 1 ms is raised to 1000 ms. `wait.timeoutMs` is the value that was
applied. Without checking it, a caller that asked for 30 minutes and got 10 will
read the timeout as "the worker is wedged" and kill a session that was working fine.

### Errors

| `errorCode` | HTTP | When |
|-------------|------|------|
| `INVALID_INPUT` | 400 | unknown `until` / `wait` token; `stop` or `blocked` requested explicitly on a mode that can never emit it (`stop` without hooks, `blocked` without hooks or a screen-read dialog; the message names the mode); `regex=` on `/wait-output`; `match` outside 1 to 200 chars; a non-numeric `timeout` |
| `NOT_FOUND` | 404 | no such session, or one this caller does not own |
| `SESSION_BUSY` | 409 | this session's waiter cap is full |
| `RATE_LIMITED` | 429 | a per-owner or process-wide waiter cap is full. Retry later; the session you named is not the problem |

The two capacity codes are deliberately different. A process-wide cap reported as
`SESSION_BUSY` would tell the caller to switch sessions, which cannot help. The
error message names the cap that was hit.

⚠️ A `401` is **not** in this table and is not an envelope at all (see
[Response envelope](#response-envelope)). It matters most here: a polling loop that
pipes each wait straight into `jq` fails with a parse error on every iteration
against a password-protected server, which reads as "the wait endpoints are broken".
Check the status first.

The per-session cap is a **combined** budget: signal waiters and output waiters
count against the same 16, not 16 of each. An abandoned request no longer holds its
slot, because the routes release the waiter when the client disconnects, but a
client that opens many concurrent waits against one session will still hit the cap.

## Terminal capture (`GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/terminal`)

What a session's terminal shows, for a client to replay: `data.terminalBuffer`,
with `source` (`mux-visible`, `mux-full-history` or `history`), `truncated`,
`truncationReason`, `fullSize`, `historyLinesCut` (a `lines=` bound left older
lines in tmux, so the remainder is more than `fullSize - retainedBytes`), and
`captureCols`/`captureRows` when the pane's geometry was read. `paneHistoryLines`
(present when the body is a pane capture whose geometry was read, like
`captureCols`/`captureRows`, and absent for a remote SSH session, whose local pane
cannot see the remote history) is the number of scrollback rows tmux holds above the
visible frame, which is the most a `full=1` request can add. `truncated` describes
the byte stream instead: for a pane with `paneHistoryLines: 0` (a fullscreen CLI in
the alternate screen) the bytes a `tail` cut dropped are earlier repaints that no
request returns. The capture runs synchronous tmux calls on the server; the
`Server-Timing` header reports `capture`, `prepare` and `total`.

| Query | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `full=1` | tmux's scrollback, not only the visible frame (`source: 'mux-full-history'`), ending with a relative cursor move back to the pane's caret. |
| `tail=<bytes>` | Keep the newest `<bytes>` of the result (`truncationReason: 'tail'` when it cut). |
| `lines=<n>` | With `full=1` only: read at most `<n>` lines of tmux history above the visible frame. An integer of at least 1, clamped to the configured history limit; absent or malformed, the whole limit (100,000 lines by default), as before. When a bound below the configured limit left older lines in tmux (its `history_size` is deeper), `truncated` is true with `truncationReason: 'tail'`; a byte cap still reports `'capped'`. Without it a full capture reads all of that history before `tail` cuts it, so a client that keeps a fixed number of lines (the tile grid sends its xterm's scrollback plus its rows) should send it. |
| `alt=recording` | With `full=1` only: if the pane is in the alternate screen (a nested tmux, where tmux keeps no history, or any full-screen app such as vim or less while it is open), answer with the visible frame over the byte recording instead (`source: 'mux-visible'`, `tail` applied as without `full=1`). Shells' automatic loads send it. |

## Experimental bounded agent inspection and guarded input

**Experimental:** `codeman agent inspect`, `stage` and `submit`, and their
`/api/v1/sessions/:id/inspect|stage|submit` routes (including `/api` aliases),
are labeled experimental, so the versioning policy's rule for experimental
surfaces applies (`docs/versioning-policy.md`, "Experimental agent
coordination"): they are not part of the stable contract. Their commands, flags, paths,
payloads and behavior may change or be removed in a minor or patch release.
Pin a compatible Codeman version when automating them. Authentication and
session ownership checks still apply.

**Opt-in:** all three routes answer `403 FORBIDDEN` while the synced
`agentCoordinationEnabled` setting is off (the default; App Settings,
Cross-session features, **Experimental agent coordination**), with a message
naming it. The check runs before session lookup and body validation, and reads
the saved setting on every request, so turning it on needs no restart.
`codeman agent inspect|stage|submit` print that refusal verbatim (exit 1).

These authenticated routes use the standard envelope and session ownership checks.
`/api/v1` aliases `/api`; an inaccessible session returns `404 NOT_FOUND` before
any transcript, pane or receipt lookup.

| Endpoint | Parameters/body | Result |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/inspect` | `maxBytes=8192` (integer 1–65536), optional opaque `since` UUID | `source`, `identity`, observed `activity`, bounded UTF8 `evidence`, `truncated`, `incremental`, `cursor`, `maxBytes`; native results also include `omittedBeforeBytes`, `scannedBytes`, optional `blockedReason` |
| `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/stage` | `{ "message": "printable single line" }` | `{ stageId, sha256, expiresAt, sessionId, submitted:false }`; types without Enter |
| `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/submit` | `{ "stageId": "UUID", "confirmSha": "64 lowercase hex characters" }` | `{ stageId, sessionId, submitted:true }`; sends one conditional Enter |

Inspection initially supports native local Codex JSONL with strict conversation
attribution, using the session's effective `CODEX_HOME`, explicit resume identity
or unique managed originator. It never selects an arbitrary newest cwd match.
The initial read selects recent complete records; `omittedBeforeBytes` explicitly
labels its tail omission. Cursor reads consume only complete appended records,
keeping UTF8/JSONL boundaries. Evidence bytes exclude response metadata and JSON
escaping. Record scans cap at 256 KiB plus bounded identity anchors; attribution
separately caps at 8192 directory entries, eight directory levels, 8 MiB of
negative-filter prefix reads and 1 MiB of candidate metadata reads (including
final identity verification). The negative filter reads 1 KiB of each rollout
first and 4 KiB only when that window holds no complete `originator` field. Once
a rollout is attributed, later calls re-verify only that file (same file identity,
same strict metadata) and rescan only the `sessions/YYYY/MM/DD` directories not
older than its own, for a second candidate such as a codex `/new`. A file that no
longer verifies falls back to one full walk; a verified file whose incremental scan
finds a second candidate or runs out of budget answers unattributed without one,
since the full walk reads a superset of that scan. So the caps bound the first call,
not every call.
An unexpected read error is `422 OPERATION_FAILED` (logged with the session id
and error code only), not a retryable `409`. Unreachable workspace/home/metadata directories
are probed with a bounded past-cap probe before canonical reads and remain
unattributed. A full incremental page can be continued with its cursor; only a
first pending record too large for the budget reports an output-budget block.
Oversized/unfinished records report `blockedReason`; incremental
reads do not silently skip them. Other modes, remote/container sessions, and
unprovable native attribution return `source:"pane-snapshot"`, `incremental:false`,
`cursor:null`; these snapshots can repeat evidence.

Attribution identifies a file, not an authoritative current-thread signal. A
configured launch resume and a new owned rollout conflict and force fallback.
An in-CLI `/resume` of an existing foreign-originator thread may leave no new
owned rollout; launch metadata cannot detect that switch. Check the returned
conversation identity and do not use these observations as proof of the active
thread, task completion or authorization.

Opaque server-side cursors bind caller, session, pane generation, conversation,
opened-file identity, byte offset and bounded content anchors. Terminal resizes
do not change this inspection scope. Each owner and session keeps its newest 8
cursors (a retry of the last call still works; older ones are retired), at most
1024 live cursors are retained in all, each for 15 minutes; restart, eviction or
expiry requires a fresh tail baseline. Replacement, truncation, detected rewrites, reassociation, foreign
cursors or loss of the attributed source return `409 CONFLICT`. No transcript
filesystem path is returned as cursor/identity metadata; evidence retains the
owner's native record content, which can itself contain paths.

Guarded input initially requires a local characterized Codex composer, one
unwrapped visible line, a recognized footer and a cursor at its exact end. The
composer glyph and footer are the CLI registry's
`capabilities.workDetect.promptGlyph` and `composerFooterLine`; a CLI that
declares no `composerFooterLine` is refused.
Unknown/working/modal/shell/remote/container composers fail closed. Stage accepts
at most 8192 UTF8 bytes, no C0/C1/DEL controls, multiline text, or trailing
whitespace (the existing mux transport trims it). Before typing, it checks the
actual captured pane width and rendered composer indentation, refusing any
message that would reach the right edge or wrap. Every declared Codex effort
word plus `default` is recognized. Its two-minute receipt stores
only hashes/ephemeral identities in a bounded in-memory store (1024 live receipts),
never persisted prompt content.

Stage refuses, before typing anything, a message that would change what Enter
does rather than what it sends, from the registry's
`composerCommandPrefixes` and `composerCompletionSigils`. For codex: a message
starting with `/` (a slash command; codex runs it, or with its command list open
runs the highlighted one) or `!` (a shell command), checked after any leading
whitespace, and a message whose last word starts with `@` (file and mention
search) or `$` (skills; every `$` word, since whether codex opens that list
depends on its skill catalog). Those popups follow the caret, which stage leaves
at the end of the message, so a `@` or `$` word earlier in the message is
accepted. Send slash and shell commands through `POST .../input`
(`codeman agent send`). Independently, a frame with a suggestion popup in the
block directly above the composer (the registry's `composerPopupLine`) is refused
at stage and submit, since codex draws every popup there and leaves the footer
below the composer unchanged.

A receipt is issued only for a capture that shows exactly the message with the
caret after it. Codex repaints its composer 30 to 60 ms after the keys arrive,
so after typing stage re-reads the pane every 50 ms for up to one second and
takes the first frame with the same pane generation, the input revision its own
write moved and a composer whose SHA-256 equals the message's. Each capture
reads the screen and the caret in one tmux invocation. A frame showing another
writer's input, a new pane lifecycle or a new geometry ends the wait at once.
Every refusal after the keys went out (typing failed or was ambiguous, the
pane changed, or no frame verified in time) is a `409` that says the message
may already be in the composer: inspect the pane and follow the stranded-draft
recovery (Ctrl+U) in the skill reference before staging again.

While a guarded submit holds the input lease (the few milliseconds of its
conditional Enter), input that reaches the session is held, not refused, and is
written in arrival order as soon as the lease is released, whatever the submit's
outcome. That covers terminal WebSocket keystrokes (each frame is acknowledged
only once it is written, so a frame typed during the lease lands before the one
typed after it), Shift+Enter and Ctrl+Enter from `POST .../send-key`, approval
answers and Codeman's own managed writes. A held write that is still being sent
holds everything behind it, with one exception: when the hold queue is full (256
inputs or 1 MiB), a managed write (`writeViaMux`, which `POST .../input` uses for a plain
prompt or `useMux`) is not held and that route falls back to a direct write, which
is refused during the lease itself but can land ahead of input still being written
after it. A tagged `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/input` (one
carrying `clientId` and `seq`) instead answers `409 CONFLICT` ("A guarded submit
is in progress on this session; nothing was written") for that span, the lease
plus the held input's drain, rather than a `200` for bytes that were never
written; it keeps its seq, so the browser's durable queue, whose POST fallback
sends one frame at a time and keeps it on a `409`, delivers it on the next retry.
Untagged input to that route is held like a WebSocket frame, because its senders
(the phone accessory keys, the Stop button) never read the answer. A lease holds
at most 256 inputs or 1 MiB; past that a WebSocket is closed with code `1013` and
nothing later from it is applied, so the browser reconnects and resends every
unacknowledged frame in order, and `send-key` and an untagged raw input answer
`409 CONFLICT`.

Direct auxiliary key operations participate in the same pending-write and input
lease checks. Complete allowlisted focus/mouse reports and empty writes preserve
input revision; mixed or unknown sequences remain keyboard-bearing. Exact
composer/caret checks also reject a mouse-moved caret.

Submit consumes an owned receipt before awaited delivery, verifies the caller,
confirmation hash and expiry, then waits until at least 250 ms have passed since
the staged keys went out (codex reads keys typed in one burst as a paste and, for
120 ms after one, turns Enter into a newline instead of a submit), then verifies
lifecycle/input/geometry revisions and exact composer/caret,
then uses a session-level conditional Enter dispatch with a temporary input lease.
Competing Codeman writes cannot enter during that dispatch. Managed restarts and
intervening browser/API/auxiliary input invalidate receipts independently of pid
reuse or restored visible text. Direct tmux edits remain outside Codeman's
serialization. Failed, ambiguous, expired, changed or repeated submits return
`409 CONFLICT`; every owned attempt consumes the receipt. Neither submit nor its
error recovery automatically replays Enter. Success acknowledges delivery of one
Enter, not native acceptance or task completion. Invalid schema input returns
`400 INVALID_INPUT`.

## The `codeman agent` CLI (client over these endpoints)

`codeman agent ls|spawn|send|wait|read|inspect|stage|submit|interrupt|rm|post|inbox|ack` (`src/cli-agent.ts`) is the command-line client for the endpoints above, for agents the skill does not reach (a pi or shell session, a machine without `jq`). It uses the guarded endpoints above for `inspect`/`stage`/`submit`, and adds no route for the other verbs: `spawn <case>` is `POST /api/v1/quick-start`, and `spawn` with no case (the caller's cwd) or with `--working-dir <dir>` (an existing local directory; combining it with a case, or an empty or whitespace-only value, refuses with exit 4 before any request; so does a cwd that resolves to the home directory, since the server would install its hooks there, so HOME needs an explicit `--working-dir ~`) is `POST /api/v1/sessions` with `workingDir`, `mode`, `name` and `parentSessionId` followed by `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/interactive` or `/shell` (the mode's `capabilities.startMode`), never retried; either form then runs `wait-output` on the mode's `capabilities.composerReadyMark` from the CLI registry where it declares one. `send` is `POST …/input` with `clientId`+`seq` (and `wait`/`waitTimeout` for `--wait` / `--until <signals>`; `delivered:false` without `duplicate` and `wait.ended` both exit 3 — the CLI never reports a dead worker as done), `wait` is `GET …/wait` (`--until`) or `GET …/wait-output` (`--match`, `from=buffer` by default), `read` is `GET …/last-response` or `GET …/terminal?tail=`, `interrupt` is `POST …/input` with a bare `\u001b`, `rm` is `DELETE …/sessions/:id`, and the inbox verbs map one to one onto the [agent inbox](#agent-inbox) routes (`post` → `POST …/inbox`, `inbox [id] [--wait]` → `GET …/inbox[?wait=]`, own inbox by default, `ack <ids…>` → `POST …/inbox/ack`); `ls` adds an `INBOX` column from `GET /api/v1/agent-inbox/summary` and drops it when that route does not answer. A fire-and-forget `send` to a sleeping wake-on-LAN host reads the route's `buffered` (own line, exit 0) and `dropped` (exit 1: the chunk is gone). An id may be the 8-character form `ls` prints, resolved through `GET /api/v1/sessions`; anything shorter refuses before any request, the same floor as `PARENT_SESSION_ID_MIN_PREFIX`. Every call carries `X-Codeman-Parent-Session`; only `spawn`'s quick-start carries `X-Codeman-Agent-Origin: codeman-agent-cli` (the agent-scratch label must never reach a request that cannot create the case directory). Basic auth comes from `CODEMAN_PASSWORD` or the data dir's `.env`. `--json` prints the envelope's `data`, except a directory `spawn`, which prints `{ sessionId, workingDir, created: true }`, plus `ready` when a readiness wait ran, `readinessError` when that call failed, and `startupError` when the start failed (with `ready: false`, exit 1, the created id kept so the caller can inspect it). An unknown `--mode` refuses (exit 4) before any request, for a named case too. Server-side error codes are shown verbatim (`INVALID_INPUT: until=stop …` on a hook-less mode is not hidden); exit codes are `0` ok, `1` error, `2` timeout, `3` the session exited, `4` refused by a client-side guard (for `inbox --wait`, `3` only when `GET /api/v1/sessions` no longer lists the session; a wait the server ended otherwise, on a restart or a detach, is `2`). `post` takes text that starts with `-` as it is (a markdown file often does); text that is exactly an option (`--json`, `-h`) goes after `--`. See the README section "`codeman agent`" for the guards and `test/cli-agent.test.ts` for the pinned behaviour.

`codeman mcp` (`src/mcp-server.ts`) is a Model Context Protocol server on stdio over the same endpoints, for MCP clients: `list_sessions` (`GET /api/v1/sessions`), `start_session` (`POST /api/v1/quick-start` with `X-Codeman-Agent-Origin: codeman-mcp`, then `wait-output` on the mode's ready mark), `send_prompt` (`POST …/input` with `wait`/`waitTimeout`), `wait_for_session` (`GET …/wait` or `…/wait-output`), `read_output` (`GET …/last-response` or `…/terminal?tail=`), `interrupt_session` and `delete_session`. It adds no route. The URL comes from `CODEMAN_API_URL` or `--url`, never a guess; prompting, interrupting and deleting are limited to sessions the process started (or the calling session's own children) unless it runs with `--allow-any-session`. See the README section "MCP server" and `test/mcp-server.test.ts`.

## Agent inbox

A per-session mailbox: another agent (or the user) posts a message, and the
receiving agent reads it when it chooses to. Nothing is typed into the
receiver's pane, which is the difference from `POST …/input`: a post does not
start or interrupt a turn, and the text may span several lines. Design and the
reasons behind each rule: [discussion #558](https://github.com/Ark0N/Codeman/discussions/558).

| Method | Route | Body / query | Answer (`data`) |
|---|---|---|---|
| `POST` | `/api/v1/sessions/:id/inbox` | `{ text }` | `{ sessionId, message, pending, unseen }` |
| `GET` | `/api/v1/sessions/:id/inbox` | `?wait=<ms>` (optional) | `{ sessionId, receiver, messages, pending, unseen, wait? }` |
| `POST` | `/api/v1/sessions/:id/inbox/ack` | `{ ids: string[] }` (1 to 200) | `{ sessionId, removed, pending, unseen }` |
| `GET` | `/api/v1/agent-inbox/summary` | | `{ sessions: { [id]: { pending, unseen, oldestUnseenAt, parked } } }` |

A message is `{ id, from, text, createdAt, seen }`. `from` is a session id or
`null` (the user); `seen` says whether the receiver had read it before this read.

**Who is calling.** The server resolves the caller from the
`X-Codeman-Parent-Session` header, the one `codeman agent` sends on every
request, with the same resolver as session lineage: a live session the caller
can see, with the same owner as the receiving session, matched by exact id or a
unique prefix of at least 8 characters. Anything else counts as no session.
The body cannot name a sender (`InboxPostSchema` is strict). In multi-user mode
that means a caller cannot claim to be another owner's session. Admins are the
exception, as everywhere else: an admin can see every session, so an admin's
request can act as any session of the receiver's owner. In single-user
mode every local process holds the same credentials, so the header is a hint the
client gives about itself, not proof.

**Read until ack.** A read returns every pending message, oldest first, and
removes nothing. Only `POST …/ack` removes, by id. Acking an id that is already
gone is a success, so a retry after a lost response does not fail.

**Seen is the receiver's.** A read marks messages seen only when the resolved
caller is the receiving session itself (`receiver: true`). Any other read, a
coordinator checking a worker or a request without the header, is a peek and
changes nothing. `ack` from anyone but the receiver is `403 FORBIDDEN`.

**`?wait=`** blocks while the inbox holds nothing **unseen**. A message that
was read but not acked does not end the wait, so a receiver that keeps one
pending does not spin. The value is clamped to the agent-wait bounds like
`timeout` on `/wait`, a timeout is a `200` with `wait.timedOut: true`, and the
waiter counts against the same per-session, per-owner and total caps (`409
SESSION_BUSY` / `429 RATE_LIMITED`). `wait` has the shape of the other wait
results plus `posted` (a post released it). A session deleted during the wait
answers `wait.ended: true` with an empty inbox. A detach or a server shutdown
ends the wait with `ended: true` as well, so check the session list before
treating the session as gone (`codeman agent inbox --wait` does: exit 3 only
when the list lacks it, exit 2 otherwise). A client that hangs up during the wait
marks nothing seen. A **peek** with `?wait=` returns at once for as long as the
receiver has unseen mail, since only the receiver's read clears it; to watch
whether a worker has read its mail, poll the summary instead.

**Limits.** 200 messages, 16384 bytes (UTF-8) per message, 512 KiB of text per
inbox. A message over the per-message cap is `400 INVALID_INPUT`. A post that
would cross either inbox cap is `409 CONFLICT` and nothing is stored; the oldest
message is never dropped to make room. Messages expire 12 hours after their
`createdAt`, read or not.

**Summary.** `GET /api/v1/agent-inbox/summary` lists every session the caller
can see that has mail or a parked receiver: `pending`, `unseen`,
`oldestUnseenAt` (epoch ms, `null` when nothing is unseen) and `parked` (the
receiver itself is waiting on `?wait=` right now). Counts only, never text. It
is not part of the session object, so a post does not broadcast
`session:updated`.

**Lifetime.** An inbox is deleted with its session (`DELETE
/api/v1/sessions/:id` and every other delete path), not when a session is
detached. By default inboxes live in memory and a server restart empties them.
The synced setting `agentInboxPersistEnabled` (default off; Settings → Cross-session features)
writes them to `agent-inbox.json` in the data dir (mode `0600`, tmp file +
rename) and restores them at boot. Inboxes of sessions that did not come back
are pruned only after the session restore succeeded; a session on the
reboot-restore offer keeps its inbox, so a rebuild finds its mail. Switching the setting off
deletes the file and keeps what is in memory. The file is never read by
`/api/search`, and the file viewer refuses it.

```bash
# coordinator: leave a task for a worker
curl -s -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$WORKER/inbox" \
  -H "X-Codeman-Parent-Session: $CODEMAN_SESSION_ID" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "$(jq -n --arg t "$(cat task.md)" '{text: $t}')"

# worker: wait for new mail, handle it, then ack by id
curl -s "$API/api/v1/sessions/$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID/inbox?wait=300000" \
  -H "X-Codeman-Parent-Session: $CODEMAN_SESSION_ID" | jq '.data.messages'
curl -s -X POST "$API/api/v1/sessions/$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID/inbox/ack" \
  -H "X-Codeman-Parent-Session: $CODEMAN_SESSION_ID" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"ids":["<id>"]}'
```

## Prompt uploads (`POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/paste-image`)

A `multipart/form-data` body with one `image` part. The file is written into the
session's workspace as `<workingDir>/.codeman-uploads/paste-<ms>-<hex>.<ext>`, and
`data` carries `path` and `filename` for the client to type the path into the
prompt. The folder is Codeman's own: hidden, created on first use with a
`.gitignore` containing `*` (written once, never over a file already there), and
cleaned up the way pasted images always were: `paste-*` files older than 7 days
go in an hourly sweep, and the folder goes when the last session of that
workspace is killed. Uploads made before this release sit in `.claude-images/`;
that folder receives nothing new, and is swept and removed the same way for one
release. A remote (SSH) session answers 400, since the file would land on the
Codeman host under a path the remote agent cannot read. A Docker session of an
owned case is fine, its workspace is bind-mounted at the same absolute path; an
adopted container (`owned: false`) mounts nothing, so its agent can open the file
only if the container itself exposes that host path.

The optional query flag `?kind=video` selects a second path for a camera-roll
video: the file streams to disk instead of being buffered, under a far larger
per-file cap (`MAX_PASTE_VIDEO_BYTES`, 1 GB by default, env
`CODEMAN_MAX_PASTE_VIDEO_BYTES`), and only video container types are accepted
(mp4, webm, mov, m4v, ogv, single-sourced from the file viewer's playable set).
The container is checked from the first bytes as
the body arrives; a file whose bytes do not match its declared type is unlinked
and answered 415, one over the cap is unlinked and answered 413, and a transfer
that dies midway leaves nothing behind. Because one video can be 1 GB,
`?kind=video` draws on its own rate limit, 3 uploads per minute per (IP, session),
beside the 30 per minute the image path keeps; without the flag the route is
byte-identical to the image-only version, same 50 MB image cap and same 30/min
bucket. The response shape is unchanged (`path`, `filename`).

Beyond images, the route also accepts documents a user hands an agent to read,
admitted by the name's extension (the Content-Type a phone attaches to a `.md`
or `.csv` is unreliable): the office formats `.pdf`, `.docx`, `.pptx`, `.xlsx`,
`.zip` and the text family `.txt`, `.md`, `.csv`, `.tsv`, `.json`, `.log`,
`.yaml`, `.yml`, `.xml`. A document is buffered under the same 50 MB image cap,
its bytes are checked against the extension (a magic-number signature, or UTF-8
with no NUL byte for text) and answered 415 on a mismatch (for text, an `error`
saying the file is not UTF-8 text, or UTF-16 text when it opens with a UTF-16
byte order mark, and to save it as UTF-8), and it is saved under
a sanitized stem of its name, so `Q3 report.pdf` is findable as
`paste-<ms>-<hex>-Q3-report.pdf`. A named type that is neither an image nor a
document (a script, an HTML page, a `.sh`) is refused 400 `Unsupported file
type`. That refusal is a scope choice, not a security property: `file-raw`
already serves non-media text inert (`text/plain`, `nosniff`), so this just
keeps the server from storing what it would serve or an agent could run, and
html and svg are the ones deliberately kept out.

## New folder in the path picker

`POST /api/filesystem/mkdir` with `{ path, name, sessionId?, showHidden? }` makes one
folder directly inside `path`, which must be a folder the path picker may browse, and
answers `{ path }`. `name` is one path segment (letters, numbers, spaces and `_ - . ~`, not
starting with a dot or `~`). `400` for a cases folder (use Add Case → Create New or Clone
Repo with no custom folder) or a `path` that is not a directory, `403` for a blocked tree
or a `path` outside the browse roots, `404` for a `path` that does not exist, `409` when
the folder already exists, and `422` when the mount under `path` does not answer.

## Rendered HTML files

An `.html`/`.htm` file renders as a page in a sandbox, in two steps
(`src/web/routes/html-view-routes.ts`).

**`POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/html-view`** with `{ "path": "<file>" }` (absolute,
relative to the session's workspace, or `~/` for this host's home, which a Docker
case refuses with `400` since its `~` is the container's; a non-empty string of at most 4096 characters
without NUL or line breaks, and no other keys) answers `data: { url }`, a
`/html-view/<cap>/<file>` URL. The capability grants GET access to the files under
that file's own folder, so a page's relative CSS, scripts, images and data files
resolve. It is held in memory only (a restart invalidates it), has a rolling TTL
(`CODEMAN_WEBVIEW_CAPABILITY_TTL_MS`, default 12 h), is reused for the same folder,
and is revoked on logout, admin logout and user deletion. Refusals:

- `400`: an invalid body, a remote (SSH) session, or a file that is not HTML (the
  symlink-resolved name counts too);
- `404`: no such file;
- `403`: a file outside the workspace that the attachment guard blocks (a blocked
  tree, or `attachmentConfineToWorkspace` on), a file in a hidden directory (inside
  the workspace, one below the workspace root), or a file directly in a folder too
  broad to serve recursively: `/`, the home folder, `/tmp`, `/var/tmp`, `$TMPDIR`,
  the cases and user-space roots, a drive's mount point (`/mnt/d`), or any folder
  above one of those (`/home`, `/Users`).

**`GET /html-view/:cap/*`** serves the page and its assets. It needs no cookie: the
capability in the path is the credential, because the page runs in an opaque origin
that never sends one. It is not under `/api`, so it has no `/api/v1` alias and no
envelope. `GET` and `HEAD` only; a CORS preflight on a live capability is answered
with `Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, HEAD`. What it serves: files under the
capability's folder whose path (requested and symlink-resolved) has no dot segment
and whose extension is on an asset allowlist (html, css, js/mjs, json, map, txt,
csv, md, svg and common image, font, wasm, audio, video and PDF types), never
outside the folder, never a blocked tree, and, for a folder outside the workspace,
not while `attachmentConfineToWorkspace` is on. Every response carries
`Content-Security-Policy: sandbox allow-scripts allow-forms allow-popups allow-modals allow-downloads`
as its whole policy (never `allow-same-origin`, so the page cannot read Codeman's
document, cookies or API, even opened as a top-level tab; and no fetch directive, so
by the owner's decision the page may load from and send requests to any host), `Cache-Control: no-store`,
`Referrer-Policy: no-referrer` and `Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *`. A `Range`
request is answered with `206` + `Content-Range` (`416` past the end), like
`file-raw`. Every refusal is a plain-text `404 Not found`; with a password set, an
unknown or revoked capability is the auth hook's `401` instead.

## Session lineage (`parentSessionId`)

A create request may name the session that spawned it, which the web UI draws as a
line between the two tabs. Accepted on `POST /api/v1/sessions` and
`POST /api/v1/quick-start`, either way:

```bash
# as a body field
-d '{"caseName":"worker-1","mode":"claude","parentSessionId":"'"$CODEMAN_SESSION_ID"'"}'

# or as a header, which is what an agent driving many spawns should use: set it once
# on the curl invocation and every spawn call carries it
-H "X-Codeman-Parent-Session: $CODEMAN_SESSION_ID"
```

The body field wins if both are present. The value is resolved against live sessions
(exact id, or a unique prefix of at least 8 characters) and must belong to the same
owner as the session being created.

**It cannot fail your spawn.** An unknown, stale, foreign or malformed value is
silently dropped and the session is created without lineage — never a `400`. It is
also pure decoration: it confers no permission, and a child is unaffected by its
parent exiting. It appears on session state as `parentSessionId` (absent when
unresolved) and survives a server restart.

## Pane directory (`paneCwd`)

Session state (`GET /api/v1/sessions`, the `session:updated` event) may carry `paneCwd`,
the directory the session's local tmux pane is in now (`#{pane_current_path}`), which
the web UI uses as the base for a relative path printed in the terminal. It is
never restored after a restart (it is written to `state.json` with the rest of the
session state but not read back), absent for remote,
Docker, adopted, direct-PTY and rediscovered sessions and for a session split into several panes,
and never a confinement root: file routes stay confined to `workingDir`.
tmux reports the resolved directory, so for a workspace reached through a symlink a
directory at or under the resolved workspace is reported in `workingDir`'s spelling.

## Live worktree (`liveWorktree`)

Session state (`GET /api/v1/sessions`, the `session:updated` event) may carry `liveWorktree`,
the linked git worktree the session's pane is in now, for example after Claude Code's
EnterWorktree moved the running session:

```json
"liveWorktree": { "name": "feature-a", "path": "/home/me/repo/.claude/worktrees/feature-a" }
```

It is derived from `paneCwd`, so it is absent wherever that is, and it is only ever a folder
strictly below `workingDir`: a worktree elsewhere is never reported. `path` is in `workingDir`'s
spelling. Like `paneCwd` it is never restored after a restart and never a confinement root.

`GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/files` takes an optional `root=live`, which starts the listing, or a
`q` search, at that worktree instead of at `workingDir`. The response's `root` names the folder
that was walked: it stays `workingDir` when the session is in no worktree, when the worktree has
gone, and when the folder no longer resolves inside `workingDir`. A `path` in the response stays
relative to `workingDir` either way, so it works unchanged on `file-content` and `file-raw`,
while a `q` containing `/` is matched against paths relative to the folder walked. The response
also carries `worktree`, the same `{ name, path }`, whenever the session has a `liveWorktree`,
whichever folder was walked and with or without `root=live`.

The walk lists at most 5,000 files and folders and opens no more folders once it has read 250,000
directory entries (the folder that crosses that line is read whole). It sets `truncated` when it
stops with anything left, which includes a folder it never opened, even if that folder would have
turned out to be empty. It is a per-directory round-robin (breadth-first): each folder found so far
gets an equal share of what is left before any of them gets more, and a folder's own files count
as one more share beside the subfolders it has just found, so one huge folder cannot use up the
listing limit before its later siblings or its own subfolders are read, and the `matches` of a `q`
search come back shallow-first. A folder made of thousands of small subfolders can still use most
of the limit one level down, and folders that add up to the read limit can leave later ones
unread. A folder below the start of the walk that does not answer a bounded probe (a mount that
stopped responding) is not read either, and counts as left over the same way. In the tree, a
directory node the walk stopped short of for either reason also carries `incomplete: true`: its
`children` hold what was listed before it stopped, which can be nothing. The key is absent on every
other node.

## Session model (`displayModel`)

Session state (`GET /api/v1/sessions`, the `session:updated` event) carries the model a
session runs as far as the server knows it, for the web UI's session headers:

```json
"displayModel": { "model": "qwen3.8-27b", "source": "screen" }
```

`source` is where it came from, strongest first:

| `source`          | Meaning                                                                                               |
| ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `custom-endpoint` | The session is pointed at a Custom Model Endpoint Profile; its `modelId` answers, whatever the CLI prints. |
| `statusline`      | Claude's statusLine exporter reported it (`model.display_name`); follows an in-session `/model`.          |
| `screen`          | Read off the CLI's own footer (`capabilities.modelDetect`, today dsh and codex); follows a switch.      |
| `config`          | What the CLI's own config pins for the session (`capabilities.modelDetect.configResolver`, today dsh-TUI's route), while its screen names none. |
| `launch`          | What the session was launched with (`--model`, the app-wide default, `<cli>Config.model`); nothing has reported since. |

Between `statusline` and `screen` the newest report wins. The field is absent when no
model is known (a shell, a CLI that reports none and was launched without one). `model`
is display text from a pane or a CLI report: control characters are stripped and it is at
most 64 characters, but treat it as untrusted text. A `statusline` or `screen` value is
persisted and restored after a server restart until the next report replaces it; a
`config` value is read again at every pane start, attach and relaunch instead.

## Prompt cache (`promptCache`)

Claude-mode session state (`GET /api/v1/sessions`) carries the main conversation's
prompt-cache state as Claude Code last reported it on the statusline (v2.1.251+), with a
change-only `session:promptCache` event (`{ sessionId, ...promptCache }`):

```json
"promptCache": { "warm": true, "ttl": "1h", "expiresAt": 1791653039000, "recacheTokensIfCold": 45000, "misses": 2, "expectedRebuilds": 1, "hitRatio": 0.91, "lastMissCauses": ["ttl_expired_1h"], "compactedAt": 1791649439872 }
```

| Field                 | Meaning                                                                                                   |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `warm`                | Whether the cached prefix is still within its TTL. The only field always present.                         |
| `ttl`                 | `5m` or `1h`; absent when Claude reported neither.                                                         |
| `expiresAt`           | Epoch MILLISECONDS when the prefix goes cold (the statusline reports seconds). Absent once cold.           |
| `recacheTokensIfCold` | Tokens the next request re-writes if the cache has gone cold. Absent right after a compaction.             |
| `misses`              | Requests that re-processed content the cache already held.                                                |
| `expectedRebuilds`    | Cache rebuilds that followed a compaction or a clearing of old tool results.                               |
| `hitRatio`            | Cache read tokens as a fraction of all input tokens this session, 0 to 1.                                  |
| `lastMissCauses`      | Claude Code's diagnosis of the last miss (e.g. `ttl_expired_1h`, `tools_changed`); untrusted text.         |
| `compactedAt`         | Epoch MILLISECONDS when the context was compacted or its old tool results cleared: the first warm report without `recacheTokensIfCold` after one that had it. Derived, not reported; dropped at the next request. |

The whole object is absent until the first report, and restored after a server restart
(so the readout is not blank until the pane's next render) rather than recomputed; a value
whose `expiresAt` has passed reads as cold. The statusline re-runs when a warm cache hits
`expiresAt`, so the cold flip arrives on its own. A post-`/clear` conversation switch drops
it. Shown in Session Options → Respawn and, for sessions without a statusline of their own,
as a `cache:until HH:MM` / `cache:cold` group in the terminal footer.

Beside it, `statusLineExporter` says whether this launch carries the statusline exporter
that sends the report, decided when the pane starts: `injected` (it does), `collection-off`
(Plan Usage was off at launch), `workspace-statusline` (the workspace's
`.claude/settings.local.json` sets its own `statusLine`, which Codeman never replaces) or
`remote` (remote and Docker sessions). Absent when unknown.

## Placing a new session in a tab group (`tabGroupId`)

`POST /api/v1/sessions` and `POST /api/v1/quick-start` accept an optional
`tabGroupId` (1 to 100 characters): the id of a group in the caller's tab layout
(`GET /api/v1/tab-layout`). The session is created as usual and placed at the end
of that group in the same layout write; the response then also carries the
committed layout as `tabLayout`. An id the caller's layout does not contain (a
deleted group, another user's group) is ignored and the session lands where it
otherwise would, never a `400`. A malformed value (`null`, an empty string, a
non-string) is a `400 INVALID_INPUT`. Requests without the field are unchanged.

### A case's default session group

- `GET /api/v1/cases/:name/default-group` → `{ caseName, groupId, groups }`: `groupId` is a
  group id from the caller's own tab layout or `null` (Ungrouped), `groups` the caller's
  current named groups (`{ id, name }`, in layout order). A stored id whose group was
  deleted reads back as `null` (the read changes nothing; the next session created for the
  case forgets it).
- `PUT /api/v1/cases/:name/default-group` with `{ "groupId": string | null }` saves it. An
  id not in the caller's layout is a `400 INVALID_INPUT` that leaves the old value in place.

Both answer `404 NOT_FOUND` for a case the caller cannot see (the same rules as
`GET /api/v1/cases`). The value is stored per owner and case, so in multi-user mode it is
never shared and needs no admin role. A new session of the case is placed in that group in
its creating write when nothing stronger applies; the order is: an explicit `tabGroupId`,
then the session it was spawned from (`parentSessionId`), then the case default, else
Ungrouped. `POST /api/v1/quick-start` uses its `caseName` (local, linked, remote and Docker
cases); `POST /api/v1/sessions` uses the case whose folder `workingDir` is (a direct child of
the caller's case space, a linked case's exact path, or a Claude worktree of either,
`<case>/.claude/worktrees/<name>`); without a `workingDir` there is no case. When a case default places the
session, the create response carries `tabLayout` as it does for `tabGroupId`. Deleting the
case forgets the value; existing sessions never move.

## Adopting a foreign tmux session

A tmux session someone started by hand (`tmux new -s work`) lives on its own socket,
where Codeman does not look for its own sessions. These two routes list such sessions
and open one as a tab. Admin-only in multi-user mode (403), since the list shows other
people's processes and adopting a shell is arbitrary execution as the server account.

`GET /api/v1/mux/foreign` lists candidates. Local sessions are always scanned, and
cached for 5 s. `?docker=1` and `?remote=1` add the containers behind the saved Docker
cases and the saved ssh hosts, one `docker exec` or ssh connection per target, so the
browser sends them only on an explicit scan. `?force=1` skips the local cache.

```json
{
  "sessions": [
    {
      "id": "fa9b76d36",
      "location": "local",
      "socketPath": "/tmp/tmux-1000/default",
      "sessionName": "work",
      "windows": 1,
      "attached": false,
      "createdAt": 1793931275000,
      "mode": "claude",
      "command": "claude",
      "workingDir": "/home/me/project",
      "adoptedBy": "961d0a82-6888-425d-a3ee-dab38ecbb598"
    }
  ],
  "scannedAt": 1793931277916,
  "notes": ["remote Build box: unreachable, or no tmux"],
  "pollIntervalMs": 8000,
  "canScanWide": true
}
```

`hostId`, `hostLabel` and `containerName` appear on a docker or remote candidate.
`adoptedBy` names the session already wrapping that target. `notes` says why a location
gave nothing, each opening with where it came from (`local`, `docker <name>`,
`remote <label>`). A session whose name or socket path holds characters Codeman will not
pass to a shell, or whose name tmux reads as a target rather than a name (one starting
with `=`, `@` or `%`, or a bare `~`), is skipped and counted in a note. A tmux server that
does not answer within 2 seconds costs only its own rows and gets a note, and a scan cut
short keeps the rows it read and says so in one. Sessions on a Codeman socket never appear,
and neither does a session named `codeman-*` or `claudeman-*` on any other socket, with no note.

`POST /api/v1/sessions/adopt` wraps one, with `{ "id": "...", "docker": true, "remote":
true }` (the two flags must match the listing the id came from; `name` and
`parentSessionId` are optional). The body carries only that opaque id: the target is
re-resolved by a fresh scan, so a candidate that is gone answers `404`, and one on a
location unreachable this time answers `404` saying so.

The answer is `{ "session": SessionState, "adopted": true }`, or
`{ "session": SessionState, "alreadyAdopted": true }` when the target already has a
wrapper. A second adopt of a target whose wrapper is still being created is
`SESSION_BUSY`. The session has `adopt` set and `pid: null`: start it like any other,
`POST .../shell` for `mode: "shell"` and `POST .../interactive` for the rest. `mode`
comes from the pane's process tree.

Closing the session detaches. The foreign session keeps running, and only Codeman's
wrapper and its grouped `codeman-view-<id>` session go, so `DELETE` removes nothing that
belongs to someone else. Codeman did not start this agent, so these refuse an adopted
session: respawn, Ralph (its config and the `fix-plan/write`, `fix-plan/read` and
`ralph-prompt/write` file routes), one-shot `POST .../run`, auto-clear, auto-compact,
auto-resume, custom model endpoints, prompt uploads and the image watcher. `stop` waits
are a 400, and so are `blocked` waits unless Codeman reads that CLI's dialogs off its
screen (codex), `git-status`, `git-fetch` and Edit history (`.../edits`) answer
`unsupported` with `reason: "adopted"`, `git-diff` and `git-fetch-settings` answer
`400 INVALID_INPUT`, and `last-response` answers empty, since Codeman knows no transcript
for it. Its `paneExit`
stays absent, because the pane holds a `tmux attach` and not the agent. Reboot restore
does not rebuild one. A wrapper that cannot start answers `OPERATION_FAILED` and leaves
the tab to be tried again: Codeman never starts a local process in its place.

## Approvals Inbox

Cross-session queue of prompts waiting on a human (permission dialogs,
AskUserQuestion questions, idle prompts). Answerable items come from Claude-mode
sessions only; DeepSeek Harness (its status bridge) and Codex (dialogs read off its
screen) open **alert-only** items with `answerInTerminal: true`. Items are
in-memory (a server restart drops them; the next prompt re-fires the hook, and a
codex dialog still on screen is read again after the pane re-attaches).
Design: [`approvals-inbox-plan.md`](approvals-inbox-plan.md).

- `GET /api/v1/approvals` → `{ approvals: ApprovalItem[] }`, oldest first,
  ownership-scoped in multi-user mode. `ApprovalItem`: `{ id, sessionId,
  sessionName, kind: 'permission'|'question'|'idle', createdAt, toolName?,
  toolSummary?, message?, cwd?, context?, options?: {n, label}[],
  acknowledgedAt?, answerInTerminal? }`. `context` is the ANSI-stripped visible pane frame;
  `options` is present only when the dialog's numbered choices parsed
  confidently; `acknowledgedAt` marks an item a human has already looked at
  (see `/viewed` below) and tells clients not to re-arm its tab alert. Listing
  also runs a staleness sweep over the caller's own items: the pane is
  re-captured, and an item whose dialog no longer parses is resolved as
  `resolved_in_terminal` instead of being returned (only items whose original
  frame parsed `options` can be dropped this way, so an unreadable capture
  keeps the item).
- `POST /api/v1/approvals/:id/answer` with `{ action: 'approve' }` (sends the
  digit `1`), `{ action: 'deny' }` (sends Esc), `{ action: 'option', option: n }`
  (sends the digit; accepted only when `n` is among the item's parsed
  `options`), or `{ action: 'text', text }` (idle prompts only; submits the
  line as a prompt). `404 NOT_FOUND` when the item is no longer pending,
  `400 INVALID_INPUT` for an `answerInTerminal` item (`<CLI> approvals must be
  answered in the terminal`), `409 CONFLICT` when the dialog left the screen or
  another actor answered first, `422 OPERATION_FAILED` when the session refused input.
- `POST /api/v1/approvals/:id/dismiss` removes the item without keystrokes.
- `POST /api/v1/approvals/session/:sessionId/viewed` → `{ sessionId,
  acknowledged: itemId | null }`. Marks the session's pending **idle** item as
  seen by a human (the web UI calls it when you open the session's tab): the
  item stays pending and answerable, but stops arming the yellow tab alert on
  every client, including after a reload. Permission/question items are never
  acknowledged this way, since looking at a dialog does not answer it. `404`
  for an unknown or inaccessible session; acknowledging twice is a no-op
  (`acknowledged: null`).

SSE events: `approval:pending` (full item), `approval:updated` (context/options
re-captured, or the item acknowledged), `approval:resolved` (`{ id, sessionId, kind, resolution }` with
`resolution` one of `answered | resolved_in_terminal | superseded |
session_ended | dismissed | expired`).

## Reboot restore

A host reboot takes the tmux server down with it, so every pane dies and the
board comes up empty. At boot Codeman works out which sessions the reboot
destroyed and holds that plan in memory, and these endpoints let a client offer
it to the user. Nothing creates a pane until the user asks: the boot-time reboot
heuristic decides whether to ASK, never whether to act.

Claude-mode sessions only (others carry their conversation id in their own
config object); remote and docker sessions are never offered, because both need
another host or container to be up. The plan is in-memory, so a server restart
drops it and the offer is gone; the conversations themselves are unaffected,
since they live in the CLI's own transcript store and stay reachable from the
Resume list. A plan nobody spends expires after 24 hours.

- `GET /api/v1/reboot-restore` → `{ sessions: RestorableSession[],
  scrollbackRestored: false }`, ownership-scoped in multi-user mode.
  `RestorableSession`: `{ id, name?, workingDir, mode, owner? }`. The persisted
  record itself is never sent. `scrollbackRestored` is always `false` and exists
  so a client states it: a restored session is a NEW pane, so the conversation
  continues and the terminal history does not.
- `POST /api/v1/reboot-restore/restore` with `{ sessionIds?: string[] }` (omit
  to restore everything the caller can see) → `{ restored: RestorableSession[],
  skipped: { sessionId, reason }[] }`. `reason` is one of `workspace-missing`
  (the directory is gone), `workspace-forbidden` (in multi-user mode it is
  outside the workspace of the user the session belongs to, re-checked against
  that owner's current grant rather than the caller's), `already-live` (the conversation is already
  open, typically resumed by hand from the Resume list), `capacity-reached`
  (the global or per-user session cap), or `rebuild-failed` (the agent would not
  start, most often a CLI binary missing from the server's PATH).
  `409 CONFLICT` when that caller already has a restore running. Entries are
  removed from the plan before any pane is built, so a double-click cannot put
  two panes on one conversation; anything that never became a pane goes back on
  offer, except `already-live`, which cannot stop being true. A restored session
  comes back attached, idle and disarmed: respawn controllers and Ralph loops
  are never re-armed automatically.
- `POST /api/v1/reboot-restore/dismiss` → `{ dismissed: n }`. Drops the offer
  for everything the caller can see.

Each rebuilt session also emits the ordinary `session:created` SSE event, so
clients other than the one that clicked pick it up without refetching.

## Read My Mind intent profiles

Per-case profiles of what the user is trying to accomplish: user/agent-stated
goals plus the user's recently submitted prompts, captured from the Claude
session transcript while the opt-in `readMyMindEnabled` setting is on (default
OFF). Keyed by owner + workingDir, so the profile survives `/clear`, respawns,
and session churn. Stored in `~/.codeman/intents.json` (mode 0600); never fed
into `/api/v1/search`. Design: [`readmymind-plan.md`](readmymind-plan.md);
user guide: [`readmymind.md`](readmymind.md).

- `GET /api/v1/sessions/:id/intent` -> `{ intent: IntentProfile }` for the
  session's case. `IntentProfile`: `{ key, workingDir, updatedAt, goals,
  recentPrompts: { ts, sessionId, text }[] }` (prompts oldest first, FIFO cap
  50, each <= 500 chars). A case with nothing recorded answers an empty
  profile with `updatedAt: 0`; nothing is persisted by reads.
- `PUT /api/v1/sessions/:id/intent` with `{ goals }` (<= 8192 chars, strict
  schema) replaces the goals text and answers the updated profile.
  `400 INVALID_INPUT` on over-long or unknown fields.
- `DELETE /api/v1/sessions/:id/intent` -> `{ deleted: boolean }` forgets the
  case's profile entirely.
- `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/readmymind` predicts the user's next prompt:
  a one-shot model call over the intent profile plus live session signals
  (pending approval dialog, transcript tail, git state, run-summary events,
  sibling sessions). Body is optional; the rethink flow passes
  `{ steer?, rejected? }` (strict schema: `steer` <= 2000 chars, `rejected`
  up to 10 strings <= 1000 chars). Answers
  `{ suggestions: { prompt, why, kind }[], durationMs }` with 1-3 suggestions
  (`kind`: `continue` | `verify` | `redirect`; prompts are single-line).
  Claude-mode sessions only (`400 INVALID_INPUT` otherwise); one prediction in
  flight per session (`409 CONFLICT`); predictor failures answer
  `502 OPERATION_FAILED`. Takes 5-90 s and costs real tokens. Suggestions are
  only ever returned, never sent: submitting one is the caller's explicit act.

All four enforce session ownership in multi-user mode; a foreign session id
answers `404 NOT_FOUND` (no existence leak), and profiles of two owners of the
same directory are distinct by construction.

## Custom Model Endpoints

Points a session's harness at a user-configured OpenAI-compatible endpoint —
local (llama.cpp, vLLM, DGX Spark) or cloud (Azure AI Foundry, OpenRouter) —
instead of its native cloud backend, gated by the opt-in
`customModelEndpointsEnabled` setting (default OFF). Endpoints are
machine-level infra, like remote/docker hosts: writes are admin-only in
multi-user mode. Design: [`custom-model-endpoints-plan.md`](custom-model-endpoints-plan.md);
user guide: [`custom-model-endpoints.md`](custom-model-endpoints.md).

- `GET /api/v1/model-endpoints` -> `CustomModelHost[]`, an unwrapped bare
  array like every other list route (still riding the standard `{success,
data}` envelope on the wire — unwrap it the same way). Answers `[]` for a
  non-admin in multi-user mode. `apiKey` is never returned; `apiKeySet:
boolean` reports whether one is stored, so a client can render "unchanged
  if left blank" without ever holding the real value.
- `POST /api/v1/model-endpoints` with `{ id, label, baseUrl, apiKey?,
authStyle?, defaultModelId?, defaultContextLength? }` creates one. `id`
  must match
  `^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+$`; `authStyle` is `bearer` (default) or `api-key`, never
  both (a real server hung indefinitely when sent both headers on one
  request); `defaultContextLength` is a user-set fallback used when
  assigning a model that discovery has no context length for (discovery
  itself never writes it); `baseUrl` must be `http(s)`, carry no embedded
  credentials, and
  is refused if it points at (or resolves to) a link-local or
  cloud-metadata address. `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` on a duplicate id.
- `PUT /api/v1/model-endpoints/:id` updates one, also accepting
  `defaultContextLength`. An **absent** `apiKey`
  keeps the stored one rather than clearing it — the client never receives
  the real value to resend deliberately unchanged, so omission is the only
  way to say "leave it alone"; there is no way to clear a key back to unset
  this way. `defaultContextLength` behaves the opposite way: a PUT without
  it clears the stored value, so send the field back to keep it.
  `defaultModelId`, when set, must be one of that endpoint's own
  `models` (`400 INVALID_INPUT` otherwise).
- `DELETE /api/v1/model-endpoints/:id` removes one.
- `POST /api/v1/model-endpoints/:id/discover-models` fetches the endpoint's
  own `GET /v1/models` and stores the result as `models`, updating
  `lastDiscoveredAt`, plus (best-effort) `modelContextLengths`,
  `modelSlotCounts` and `modelSizesGB`: every listing entry is read for a
  stated context figure (`context_length`, then `context_window`) and a
  size, BEFORE any loaded check; only the launch-command/`/props`
  enrichment needs a model llama-swap's own response reports loaded. A
  loaded model's context figure comes from llama-swap's own launch command
  (`--fit-ctx` / `-c` / `--ctx-size`), falling back to `/props` (`n_ctx`,
  `total_slots`) for whatever the command did not answer, and OVERWRITES the
  listed figure for that model; the model's own listing
  (`context_length`, then `context_window`) only ever fills the gap when
  neither probe does, and is recorded as a single-slot figure:
  llama-swap lists the PER-SLOT window, so whenever the listed figure is
  the one taken the stored slot count is 1. A server with no `status`
  field on any entry (plain llama.cpp, a non-llama-swap gateway) gets no
  launch-command/`/props` enrichment at all, only whatever its listings
  state. `modelContextLengths` falls back to the
  endpoint's `defaultContextLength` when a session is assigned a model
  discovery never learned a window for. A `defaultModelId` that no longer
  appears in the fresh list is dropped
  rather than carried forward invalid. Failures answer `422 OPERATION_FAILED`
  with the underlying connection error, or a named egress refusal if the
  resolved address turned out to be blocked. The same refresh also runs
  automatically for every saved endpoint every 5 minutes in the background
  (`refreshAllCustomModelHosts()`, `custom-model-routes.ts`, started from
  `server.ts`), so there is no route for triggering "refresh all" — one
  endpoint being unreachable on a cycle never blocks the others.
- `GET /api/v1/model-endpoints/:id/running-status` -> `{ isLlamaSwap,
running: [{model, state}], logLine? }`, read-only, no admin gate
  (any session owner who could already point a session at this endpoint can
  equally ask what it currently has loaded). `isLlamaSwap` is
  feature-detected via the endpoint's own `GET /running` — a plain
  llama.cpp/OpenAI-compatible server has none and always answers `false`.
  `logLine`, present only when `isLlamaSwap` is true, is the most recent
  REAL backend `llama-server` process log line (`load_model: ...`,
  `llama_server: model loaded`, etc.), sourced from the endpoint's own
  `GET /api/events` SSE stream and filtered to `source: "upstream"` frames
  only (never llama-swap's own `source: "proxy"` request-access log) — one
  connection is held open per endpoint and reused across every poller,
  idle-closed after 30s of nobody asking. This is what the Run-menu
  picker's loading banner polls once a second while a model is loading.
- `POST /api/v1/sessions/:id/custom-model` with `{ endpointId, modelId,
confirmed? } | { clear: true }` applies (or clears) the session's
  selection and **restarts the session's CLI process in place** — every
  supported harness reads its endpoint config at process start, never per
  turn, so there is no live hot-swap. (`POST /api/v1/quick-start`'s own
  `customModel: { endpointId, modelId, confirmed? }` field is the
  no-restart equivalent for a session that doesn't exist yet — see below.)
  A Claude session resumes its existing conversation across the restart;
  pi/omp/grok additionally get a forced `--model`/`-m` value, since for
  those three the config file alone does not select it. `400 INVALID_INPUT`
  for a remote (SSH) or Docker session — both restart their agent
  differently under the hood, and applying to one would report success
  while changing nothing. Two more responses replace the normal
  `{customModel, restarted}` shape, neither an error, and neither restarts
  or creates anything on the first ask. ⚠️ **Each is answered by its OWN
  flag on the retry, and answering one is not consent to the other**: they
  are questions about different people, and while they shared a single flag
  a caller who confirmed the context warning silently agreed to evict
  another session's model as well. Send `confirmedContext: true` to proceed
  past the context warning, `confirmedSwap: true` past the swap conflict,
  and both when both were asked (they accumulate, so the second retry still
  carries the first answer). The original `confirmed: true` still means
  BOTH and is still accepted, because it shipped in this feature's
  HTTP-API-only cut; new callers should send the specific one:
  - `{requiresConfirmation: true, currentlyLoadedModel, affectedSessions}` —
    llama.cpp/llama-swap only runs one model at a time, and switching would
    unload a model another **live session's own selection** is actively
    using. Never returned for a plain (non-llama-swap) server, and never
    just because a swap is needed at all — only when it would disrupt
    someone else.
  - `{requiresContextWarning: true, modelId, contextLength,
minSafeContextTokens, slotCount?}` — `slotCount` is present whenever the model runs more than
    one parallel llama.cpp slot, and the warning also fires when the context
    divided across those slots is below the floor even though the whole context
    is not. Claude Code's own fixed per-turn overhead
    (system prompt + tool schemas) can exceed a small model's entire
    discovered context on its own, before any conversation history exists
    to compact, guaranteeing the very first message fails regardless of
    `CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_CONTEXT_TOKENS`. Gated on the CLI registry declaring a
    `contextLengthVar` (claude only today), so it never fires for another
    harness.
- `POST /api/v1/quick-start`'s `customModel: { endpointId, modelId,
confirmed?, confirmedContext?, confirmedSwap? }` field (alongside its
normal `caseName`/`mode`/etc. body)
  computes the same injection **before** the session exists and launches
  directly on the endpoint — no restart, because there was never a
  native-backend boot to restart away from. Runs the identical checks as
  the dedicated route above (`requiresConfirmation`/`requiresContextWarning`,
  same shapes, same per-question `confirmedContext`/`confirmedSwap` retry),
  and is refused the same way
  for a remote or Docker case. This is what the Run-menu picker uses for
  opencode, Codex, Gemini, Pi, Grok, DeepSeek and OMP; Claude still uses the
  dedicated restart route above (its `--resume`-based restart is far less
  jarring than a full relaunch, and folding it into the one-shot path is
  separate work — see `docs/custom-model-endpoints-plan.md`).

## Creating a case in a custom folder

`POST /api/cases` takes `{ name, description?, path? }`. Without `path` it creates `<cases dir>/<name>` as always. With `path` (absolute, or starting with `~`) the case folder is created at that exact path instead, scaffolded the same way (`CLAUDE.md`, `src/`, `.claude/settings.local.json`), and registered in the linked-cases registry, so it lists, resolves and deletes like a linked case (deleting unlinks; it never removes files). Response: `{ case: { name, path } }`, where `path` is the symlink-resolved folder.

The target is judged before anything is written:

- It must be absolute with no `..` and none of the shell metacharacters a session working directory is rejected for (spaces are fine). `400 INVALID_INPUT` otherwise.
- It must not be a system directory (`/etc`, `/usr`, `/proc`, ...), the home folder itself, Codeman's own data folder, or a credential/config tree (`~/.ssh`, `~/.aws`, `~/.claude`, ...). Judged on the path as typed and on its symlink-resolved form, against both the given and the symlink-resolved roots. `400`.
- It must not be the cases directory (the caller's own or the shared one) or a direct child of it, since those are what `GET /api/cases` lists as local cases: a case there is a plain create without `path`. A folder further down is allowed. `400`.
- Its parent must already exist (one folder is created, never a chain): `404 NOT_FOUND`. A parent that does not answer (an unreachable network mount) or cannot be read is `422 OPERATION_FAILED`, checked through the bounded path probe before anything else touches it.
- The folder must not exist, or must be an **empty** directory; a folder with contents is Link Existing's job: `409 ALREADY_EXISTS`. A symlink or a plain file at the target is `400`.
- `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` also for a case name already in use (in the cases dir or the registry) and for a folder that is already a case.

Admin only in multi-user mode (`403`), like `POST /api/cases/link`: it writes outside the cases directory and into the shared, ownerless registry. If anything fails after the first write, what this call created is removed (the whole folder if it created it, otherwise only the scaffold inside the empty folder you picked) and the response is `500`, or `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` when the name was linked meanwhile, or `409 CONFLICT` when `linked-cases.json` cannot be read or is not a JSON object. Such a file is refused and left as it is, because writing over it would unlink every other case; `POST /api/cases/link` refuses it the same way.

`POST /api/cases/clone` takes the same optional `path`, with `{ name, repository, ref?, shallow?, description?, path? }`. Without `path` the repository is cloned to `<cases dir>/<name>` as always. With `path` the repository is cloned **into that exact folder** (no `<name>` subfolder is added) and registered as a linked case, judged by the same rules as above: `400` for an invalid or blocked path (or a symlink or file at the target), `404` for a missing parent, `422` for an unreachable parent, and `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` for a folder that has files, a name already in use or a folder that is already a case. Admin only in multi-user mode (`403`). An existing empty folder is cloned into directly and is kept, emptied again, if the clone fails; a second clone into the same folder while one is running is refused with `409`. A destination at or inside a Docker case workspace is refused `400 INVALID_INPUT` (git would run the new repository's hooks and filters on the host, and a container can write there), and `503` when the Docker case list cannot be read. If the clone succeeds but the case cannot be registered, the cloned folder is kept and the error names it, then use Link Existing: `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` when the name was linked while git ran, `409 CONFLICT` when `linked-cases.json` is refused as above, and `500 OPERATION_FAILED` when the write itself fails.

## Git status

`GET /api/sessions/:id/git-status` is what the bottom-bar Git indicator and its panel read (Settings → Header & Panels → Bottom bar, per-device, default off). It reports what the session's workspace has not committed or pushed. **Read-only and offline:** it never fetches, pulls, commits or writes (it runs `git status` with `--no-optional-locks`, so it does not even refresh the index), which is why `behind` is as of the last `git fetch` (the panel's Fetch button is a separate route, below). The session is resolved like every session route (ownership via `findSessionOrFail`; another user's session is `404`). A repository whose root is, or is inside, a Docker case workspace is dropped (from the walk-up, the scan below a folder, and the diff route): a container can write there, and a repository's own clean filter or signature program would run on the host. When a branch's upstream does not exist on the remote (deleted and pruned, or never pushed, as after cloning an empty repository and committing), `upstreamGone` is `true` and the unpushed list falls back to commits on no remote-tracking ref at all.

`GET /api/sessions/:id/git-diff?repo=<repoRoot>&path=<path>&kind=staged|unstaged|untracked|conflicted` returns the unified diff of one file the panel lists (`{ diff, truncated, binary }`; staged is index vs HEAD, unstaged is working tree vs index, untracked is the whole file as additions). It is what opens when you click a file in the Git panel. `repo` and `path` are matched against the current status rather than trusted, so anything the status does not list is `404`. Read-only: it passes `--no-ext-diff --no-textconv` (no external diff or textconv driver runs), but a repository's clean filters still run, as they do for any `git diff`, which is why a repository a container can write to is never inspected (below). Capped at 400 KB, and refused (`400`) for remote and Docker sessions; a repository at or inside a Docker case workspace is not in the status, so it is `404` here.

**Which repositories.** git finds a repository by walking *up* from the session's working directory, so:

- Inside a repository (or at its root): that one repository, whole (a subfolder reports its enclosing repo, `path` says where it is, e.g. `../..`). A nested repo below it is just an untracked folder to the outer one and is not scanned; start the session inside it to see it.
- **Not** inside one (a folder that holds several projects): every repository found up to **two levels down**, nearest and alphabetical first, at most `maxRepos` of them (default 12, 1 to 50; `reposTruncated` says when there were more and `repoLimit` is the limit that was applied). Dot-folders, `node_modules`, `dist`, `build`, `target`, `vendor`, `venv` and `__pycache__` are skipped, symlinks are never followed, and a repository's own contents are not searched. The list of repositories is re-scanned at most every 30 s; each repository's status is cached for 4 s.
- A repository that merely sits **above** the workspace and is the home folder or higher (a dotfiles repo in `$HOME`, or `/`) is ignored: its dirty files are not this session's work. A workspace that *is* that repository's root is not ignored.
- A worktree (whose `.git` is a file) counts as a repository. A submodule's own uncommitted files are not reported, only a changed submodule pointer.

Both routes accept two optional query parameters, which the UI sends from its per-device settings and the server clamps again: `maxRepos` (1 to 50, default 12) and `timeout` (seconds one git command may run, 5 to 120, default 30). An empty or non-numeric value means the default. A repository whose `git status` fails (typically a timeout on a slow network share) is **kept in `repos[]`** with `status.state: 'error'` and the reason in `status.error`, not dropped, so it is visible that something is not being reported.

`data` is `{ state, repos, reposTruncated, repoLimit, checkedAt }` (`repoLimit` in the folder-of-projects case only):

- `state: 'ok'`: `repos[]`, each `{ name, path, status }` where `name` is the repository folder's name, `path` its root relative to the working directory, and `status` is:
  `branch` (null when `detached`), `upstream`, `ahead`, `behind`, `hasRemote`, `counts` (`staged`, `unstaged`, `untracked`, `conflicted`, `uncommitted` = distinct paths, `stashes`), `files[]` (`path` relative to `repoRoot`, `origPath` for a rename, `index` and `worktree` status letters, `kind`: `staged` \| `unstaged` \| `untracked` \| `conflicted`; a file that is staged *and* modified again appears once per kind), `filesTruncated`, `unpushedCount` (exact) and `unpushed[]` (newest first: `hash`, `author`, `time` in epoch seconds, `subject`), `repoRoot`, `checkedAt`.
- `state: 'not-a-repo'`: no repository here, above (that counts) or within two levels below.
- `state: 'unsupported'` with `reason: 'remote' | 'docker' | 'adopted'`: those sessions are never inspected (a Docker workspace is writable from inside its sandbox, and git here would run on the host; an adopted session's `workingDir` is a neutral `/tmp`, not its workspace).
- `state: 'error'` with a short `error` (git missing, timed out, or git's first stderr line with any `user:token@` credentials redacted).

Lists are capped (300 files and 50 commits per repository) while the counts stay exact. A branch with no upstream reports the commits no remote has (`HEAD --not --remotes`); a repository with no remote reports `unpushedCount: 0`, since there is nothing to push to. Concurrent polls of one folder share a single git invocation; `?fresh=1` (what the panel's Refresh button and opening the panel send) skips the short-lived caches, though it still joins a computation already running.

`POST /api/sessions/:id/git-fetch` is the panel's **Fetch** button: one `git fetch --quiet` per repository the panel would show, through the same resolver so the two cannot disagree about which repositories belong to a workspace, with the same `maxRepos` and `timeout` clamps. It is the only git command the Git panel runs that writes (cloning and worktree management write too, but only when you asked for them at the moment you asked), and it writes remote-tracking refs only: nothing commits, checks out, merges or touches the working tree. It is not quite as harmless as a read: a fetch holds git's ref lock, so an agent's own `git pull` in the same clone can hit the same `cannot lock ref` while a fetch is running, which is why one folder is fetched by one run at a time. It runs on that click, or on the interval below and never otherwise, and `git fetch` is exactly the command that can run a repository's own hooks (`reference-transaction`, `pre-auto-gc` through the automatic maintenance a fetch triggers, and config commands such as `credential.helper`), which is why nothing runs on a timer until you opt in, and why a repository at or inside a Docker case workspace is refused before any git runs. Remote, Docker and adopted sessions answer `state: 'unsupported'` like the status route. Bounded: 4 repositories at a time across the whole run (one shared bound, not one per repository group; a scheduled tick keeps that one bound for all its folders, so 4 folders do not mean 4 × 4, and works at most 4 folders at a time), one spawn per repository with the same per-command timeout, which reaches the whole process group rather than only the `git` parent (a fetch over http spawns helper processes, and a timeout that signals the parent alone can leave one running after the answer goes out), `GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0` plus BatchMode ssh so a repository that needs a login fails fast instead of hanging the request on an invisible prompt. Codeman supplies no credentials, so a repository your own git is already signed in to works because that is your existing setup. That BatchMode ssh is a default, never an override: your own `GIT_SSH_COMMAND` and the repository's `core.sshCommand` are honoured, and ⚠️ the default's `StrictHostKeyChecking=accept-new` records an unknown host key in `~/.ssh/known_hosts` without asking: BatchMode stops a prompt, not a write. A click joins a run already going for the same folder, and the click publishes the trigger of the run it actually did (`click` when the click was the run, `interval` when it joined a tick already going, because a click that fetched nothing cannot report itself as the fetch) as the session's `gitFetch` state (below), so another tab open on the same folder sees the same run.

`data` is `{ state, repos, reposTruncated, repoLimit, fetchedAt }`, `repos[]` each `{ name, path, ok }` and, when it failed, `failure` (`{ code, message, stderr }`: the codes as in the clone failures, plus `NO_REMOTE`). A repository that could not be fetched keeps its row rather than being dropped. The panel shows the result under its list and then re-reads, so `behind` reflects what this fetch brought.

The interval is two **synced** settings in `PUT /api/settings` (`src/git-fetch-scheduler.ts`): `gitFetchEnabled` (default `false`) and `gitFetchIntervalSeconds` (30 to 3600, default 300, the gap between runs timed from the start of a run so a slow repository does not push the next one out). Synced, not per-device, because the server is what acts on them; the scheduler reads them fresh on each 15 s tick, so a change works without a restart. A session can override both, and the override wins even while the app-wide switch is off: `POST /api/sessions/:id/git-fetch-settings` takes `{ "enabled": true | false | null, "intervalSeconds": number | null }` (`null` on a field clears that half so the app value applies again, a field left out of the body leaves the other half as it was), is `400 INVALID_INPUT` for a remote, Docker or adopted session, and answers `200` with `{ gitFetchSettings: { enabled, intervalSeconds } }` where `null` means the session follows the app. What the last run did rides the session state as `gitFetch` (`{ ranAt, trigger, state, repos, failed, firstFailure? }`, `trigger` is `click` or `interval`), on the existing `SessionUpdated` event: no new event. Sessions on the same folder share one run and both see its result, the schedule is keyed by folder, and a folder is fetched by at most one run at a time; a folder is due when ANY session open on it is due, so the order the sessions were read cannot decide which interval wins, and the folder is probed once for the whole group rather than once per session on it; every session open on a folder is remembered, so closing the one that holds the override does not stop that folder's fetching while another session is still open on it. The tick skips anything its bounded probe does not confirm is a directory, stamps each folder's schedule when it picks it, and does not run a second tick over a selection still going. Remote, Docker and adopted sessions are never fetched on a timer, and the Docker rule is re-checked against the CURRENT Docker roots every tick. Both fetch paths fail closed on a Docker case list (`docker-cases.json`) that exists but cannot be read or parsed: a click answers `200` with `state: 'error'` and publishes that as its `gitFetch`, and a tick fetches nothing and leaves its folders due for the next tick, since without the list nothing tells which folders a container can write to (the read-only status and diff routes keep reading such a list as no Docker workspaces).


## Edit history

What the Edit history panel reads (Settings → Header & Panels → Header, per-device, default off): the edits a **claude session** made (local or remote SSH), main agent and subagents, read from its transcripts. Read-only. Every route resolves the session through `findSessionOrFail` (another user's session is `404`). A remote session is read over ssh and never woken: a sleeping host answers `unavailable`. Docker, non-claude and adopted sessions answer `state: 'unsupported'` and are never read.

`GET /api/sessions/:id/edits[?sync=1]` lists the stored edits, newest first, without diffs: `{ state, reason?, backfillTruncated, agents, entries }`. With `sync=1` it first reads what the transcripts gained since the last read (after `/clear` or a resume, the previous conversation's transcripts to their end first); without it the server reads nothing. `state` is `ok`, `unavailable` (stored entries only; `reason` is `no-transcript` before the session has a transcript Codeman can find, `removed` while the session's history is being deleted, or the read error; the transcript is the one the session's hooks report, else the newest `<id>.jsonl` under the session's `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR` override or the server's config dir; a remote session sends no hooks, so its host is asked over ssh for the conversation the pane's claude writes now, else the most recently written of the stored conversation, the session's `claudeSessionId` and its id, under the host's `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR` or `~/.claude`) or `unsupported` (`reason`: `docker`, `mode`, `adopted`). Each entry is `{ id, ts, path, relPath, kind: 'code'|'image', tool, created, added, removed, truncated, agentId? }`, where `tool` is the edit tool, `bash` for an image a Bash call produced or `sent` for one the agent sent; `relPath` is relative to the workspace (a subagent's worktree for its edits). `agents` maps a subagent id to `{ description, agentType, worktreeBranch? }`. `backfillTruncated: true` means older edits can still be loaded.

`GET /api/sessions/:id/edits/:entryId` returns one edit's diff as unified text: `{ diff, truncated }` (each edit's diff is capped at 64 KiB). `404` for an edit the session does not have.

`POST /api/sessions/:id/edits/older` reads the next older block, within the current conversation, of up to three transcripts, a full read budget each (with more transcripts, main and subagents take turns), and answers like the list.

The edits are stored per session in `~/.codeman/edit-history/<id>.json` (mode 0600, at most 500 edits and 4 MiB of diff text, the oldest dropped), deleted when the session's record is removed (a killed pinned session keeps it; at startup, a file whose session no longer exists is deleted too) and never fed into `/api/v1/search`. No route here serves a file: the panel shows thumbnails through `file-raw` inside the workspace only; an image outside it opens in the file preview, which registers it through the attachment route.

## Git worktrees of a case

A local case whose folder is the top of a git repository can keep **worktrees** at `<case>/.claude/worktrees/<name>`, each on its own branch, so several agents on one repository never share a checkout. This is the layout Claude Code's own `claude --worktree <name>` uses (branch `worktree-<name>`), so either tool finds the other's worktrees. Remote (SSH) and Docker cases are refused with `400 INVALID_INPUT` before git runs, and so is a local case whose folder is at or inside a Docker case workspace: `git worktree add` runs the repository's post-checkout hook and checkout filters on this machine, and a container can write there. A case folder that is not a repository, is a bare repository, or sits below the repository's top level is `400` too. The case resolves the way quick-start resolves it (a linked case is admin-only in multi-user mode, everything else is the caller's own case space; another user's case is `404`), and a case folder on a mount that does not answer is `422 OPERATION_FAILED`, never `404`.

`GET /api/cases/:name/worktrees` lists `git worktree list` for the case's repository:

```json
{
  "caseName": "myrepo",
  "repoRoot": "/home/me/codeman-cases/myrepo",
  "worktreesDir": "/home/me/codeman-cases/myrepo/.claude/worktrees",
  "truncated": false,
  "worktrees": [
    { "path": "/home/me/codeman-cases/myrepo", "head": "6910cb15…", "branch": "main", "detached": false, "bare": false,
      "locked": false, "prunable": false, "main": true, "isCase": true, "managed": false, "sessionCount": 0, "sessions": [] },
    { "path": "/home/me/codeman-cases/myrepo/.claude/worktrees/fix-login", "branch": "worktree-fix-login",
      "main": false, "isCase": false, "managed": true, "name": "fix-login",
      "sessionCount": 1, "sessions": [{ "id": "2a568379-…", "name": "w1-fix-login" }] }
  ]
}
```

`managed` is `true` only for `<repoRoot>/.claude/worktrees/<name>`: those are the ones Codeman starts sessions in and removes; any other worktree of the repository is listed for information. `sessionCount` counts live sessions of every owner running in that worktree (a session belongs to the deepest worktree holding its folder), `sessions` lists the ones the caller may see. `lockReason`/`prunableReason` appear when git reports them.

`POST /api/cases/:name/worktrees` with `{ name, branch?, base? }` creates one (`201`, `{ worktree: { name, path, branch, base, head, excludeAdded, warnings } }`):

- `name`: 1 to 64 characters of `A-Z a-z 0-9 . _ -`, starting with a letter or digit, no `..`, not ending in `.` or `.lock`. `400` otherwise.
- `branch`: the NEW branch, default `worktree-<name>`. Letters, digits, `.`, `_`, `-`, `/`, then `git check-ref-format --branch` must accept it unchanged. An existing branch is `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` (never reset), and so is a name whose folder already exists.
- `base`: where the branch starts, default `HEAD` (the case's current commit): a branch, tag or commit, resolved before anything is written (`400` when it is not a commit, which includes an empty repository).
- `excludeAdded` lists the lines appended to the repository's local `info/exclude` (in the real common git dir, never a tracked `.gitignore`) when git did not already ignore them: `/.claude/worktrees/`, so the main checkout does not show the worktrees as untracked, `/.claude/settings.local.json`, the hooks file Codeman writes for every claude session, which would otherwise make `git worktree remove` refuse, and the agent skill copy (`/.claude/skills/codeman/`, `/.agents/skills/codeman/`: every skills folder the CLI registry names) that sessions get while `agentSkillEnabled` is on, for the same reason.
- A symlinked `.claude` or `.claude/worktrees` directory is refused (`400`): a repository cannot redirect the worktree outside itself.

`DELETE /api/cases/:name/worktrees/:worktree[?deleteBranch=true]` removes a managed worktree with `git worktree remove` **without `--force`**: git refuses a worktree with modified or untracked files (or a locked one), and that refusal is the answer, `409 CONFLICT` with git's own words in `error`. A live session at or inside the worktree is `409` as well. With `deleteBranch=true` the branch is deleted with `git branch -d`, never `-D`, so an unmerged branch is kept: the response is still `200`, with `branchDeleted: false` and git's reason in `branchError`. Response: `{ removed: { name, path, branch, branchDeleted, branchError? } }`. A folder git does not list as a worktree of this repository, or a symlink in its place, is `404`/`400`. A worktree that is, sits inside, or holds a Docker case workspace is `400` too (git would run inside a folder the container writes, and the removal would delete that workspace under it). A managed worktree whose folder is gone (deleted by hand; the list reports it `prunable`) is still removable: git then only drops its record, which is what frees the name for a new worktree. A session never starts in one.

**Starting a session in a worktree** goes through the normal create paths: `POST /api/quick-start` takes `worktree: "<name>"` next to `caseName` and runs the session (and the hooks, the agent skill and `modelOverride`) in the worktree folder; the response adds `worktree` and `workingDir`. It is refused for remote and Docker cases (`400`), for a worktree that is not a registered, managed one (`404`), and for a case that does not exist (`404`: a worktree launch never scaffolds a case). `POST /api/sessions` takes the worktree path as `workingDir` like any other folder.

## Settings

`~/.codeman/settings.json` is one file for the whole server: the synced App Settings (feature switches, the plan-usage collection switch `showPlanUsageLimits`, `runMode`, `respawnPresets`, `tunnelEnabled`, ...), plus `modelConfig`, `caseOrder` and `lastUsedCase`. Reads are open to every signed-in user; in multi-user mode a non-admin reads it without what is the admin's (`voiceSettings.apiKey`, the Deepgram key an admin saved, and the admin's case names in `caseOrder` and `lastUsedCase`). **In multi-user mode every write is admin only:** for a non-admin the routes below answer `403 FORBIDDEN` before the body is even validated, so nothing is written, no watcher is toggled and no tunnel is started. Single-user mode is unaffected. Every write to the file (these routes, and the `lastUsedCase` that `POST /api/quick-start` and `POST /api/ralph-loop/start` record before they answer) runs one at a time and replaces the file atomically (mode `0600`); the one write outside that queue is a config-backup restore, which must work on a file that does not parse. A write to a `settings.json` that exists but is not a JSON object is refused rather than starting from `{}`, which would erase every other setting: the routes below answer `409 CONFLICT` with a message naming the fix and leave the file untouched, the two starts skip their `lastUsedCase`, and an admin's `POST /api/cases/:name/rename` answers the same `409 CONFLICT`, checked before it ends any session or moves the folder. A missing or empty file still starts from `{}`.

| Method | Path                          | Body                                 | Notes |
| ------ | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ----- |
| `GET`  | `/api/settings`               | none                                 | The stored settings object. Never writes. For a non-admin in multi-user mode, without `voiceSettings.apiKey`, `caseOrder` and `lastUsedCase`. |
| `PUT`  | `/api/settings`               | partial settings (strict schema)     | Merged into the stored file; services (watchers, tunnel, tmux history limit) reconcile to the merged result. `403 FORBIDDEN` for a non-admin in multi-user mode. A tunnel enable with no login (no `CODEMAN_PASSWORD`, not multi-user) is refused separately (`403 OPERATION_FAILED`, resend with `acknowledgeUnauthTunnel: true`) unless the server runs with `CODEMAN_ALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_TUNNEL=1` or `--allow-unauthenticated-tunnel`. `CODEMAN_ALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_NETWORK` does not count; when it is set, the refusal says so. An enable without that authorization is accepted only while the tunnel is already running and never stores `tunnelEnabled: true`; if the tunnel stops before the request would start it, it is not restarted and the answer is the same `403 OPERATION_FAILED` (the request's other settings are saved). |
| `GET`  | `/api/tunnel/status`          | none                                 | `{ running, url, loginConfigured }`. `loginConfigured` is `true` when a login protects the server (`CODEMAN_PASSWORD` set or multi-user mode on), the same test the tunnel guard above applies; with `false` the browser asks before every tunnel enable. Neither opt-in variable makes it `true`. |
| `GET`  | `/api/execution/model-config` | none                                 | `modelConfig` (cron's and the plan orchestrator's default model). |
| `PUT`  | `/api/execution/model-config` | `{ defaultModel?, agentTypeOverrides?, ... }` | Replaces `modelConfig`. `403 FORBIDDEN` for a non-admin in multi-user mode. |
| `PUT`  | `/api/cases/order`            | `{ order: string[] }`                | The one case order every user's `GET /api/cases` is sorted by. `403 FORBIDDEN` for a non-admin in multi-user mode. |
| `PUT`  | `/api/config`                 | `{ pollIntervalMs?, defaultTimeoutMs?, maxConcurrentSessions?, respawn? }` (strict) | The process-wide app config in `state.json`. `403 FORBIDDEN` for a non-admin in multi-user mode. |

A non-admin's `POST /api/quick-start` and `POST /api/ralph-loop/start` work as before but do not record their case as `lastUsedCase` (a server-wide key).

`POST /api/cases/:name/rename` (body `{ newName, renameFolder?, stopSessions? }`, strict) renames a case. It is not one of the admin-only writes above: in multi-user mode a non-admin renames their own cases, and only the `settings.json` part is skipped for them. A case under the cases directory is its folder, so it always moves; a linked case renames its alias in `linked-cases.json` and moves its real folder (next to the old one, named `newName`) only with `renameFolder: true`. Remote and Docker cases are `400`. The new name must be free in every namespace the list merges (`409`). Live sessions whose working directory is at or inside the folder that would move make it `409` with `requiresStop: true` and `sessions: [{ id, name }]`; retry with `stopSessions: true` to end them first (they are closed as by `DELETE /api/sessions/:id`, nothing is restarted); another user's session is `403`. The folder is held by an in-process lock for the whole operation (an overlapping rename is `409 BUSY`, and `new Session` refuses a working directory inside it); a session that is still being created in the folder (constructed, not yet registered, so it can be neither listed nor stopped) makes a folder move `409` with `renameCode: "BUSY"` too, and a retry once it is registered lists it like any open session; the move is retried for a transient `EBUSY`/`EPERM`/`EACCES` and then answers `423` with `renameCode: "LOCKED"`, a cross-device move is `400`, and if the registries cannot be written afterwards `settings.json` and the folder are put back (when the folder cannot be moved back, the answer is `500` and says it is now at the new path). A failed write is `500`. A linked case's entry is checked again where it is written, after any folder move, and a refusal there puts everything back the same way: a new name linked since the first check is `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` with `renameCode: "EXISTS"`, an old entry unlinked or changed since then is `409 CONFLICT` with `renameCode: "BUSY"`, and a `linked-cases.json` that stopped being readable or a JSON object is `409 CONFLICT` with no `renameCode` (one already damaged when the rename starts reads as empty, so a linked name answers `404`). An error from the rename itself carries `stoppedSessions`: how many sessions it ended before it failed. On success the response is `{ oldName, newName, oldPath, newPath, folderMoved, stoppedSessions }`; `caseOrder` and `lastUsedCase` (in multi-user mode, by an admin's rename only), `linked-cases.json` and Claude Code's `projects/<path>` history are updated (history already at the new path is merged into, never overwritten), and `case:renamed` is broadcast. A linked case is admin only in multi-user mode: for a non-admin the name is looked up in their own case space only (`404` when they have no case of that name).

### System operations

The same multi-user rule covers the operations that act on the whole server. For a non-admin:

| Method | Path                          | Multi-user non-admin |
| ------ | ----------------------------- | -------------------- |
| `POST` | `/api/system/update`          | `403 FORBIDDEN` (the update restarts the server under every user) |
| `POST` | `/api/system/span-displays`   | `403 FORBIDDEN` (opens a window on the server's desktop) |
| `POST` | `/api/tunnel/qr/regenerate`   | `403 FORBIDDEN` (it clears every user's outstanding QR login code) |
| `POST` | `/api/cleanup-state`          | `403 FORBIDDEN` (drops every user's stale session records) |
| `POST` | `/api/auth/revoke`            | Revokes only the caller's own login sessions: the bare form (`{}`) signs them out everywhere, and a `sessionToken` is revoked only when it is theirs. For an admin, and in single-user mode, the bare form still revokes every login session |
| `GET`  | `/api/tunnel/info`            | `authSessions` lists only the caller's own logins |

## CLI management

Read and write the CLI registry (`docs/cli-registry.md`). Every **write** route answers `403 FORBIDDEN` while `cliManagementEnabled` is off (the default), and for a non-admin in multi-user mode. A write that would overwrite a `clis.json` which does not parse, or which has group/world permission bits, is refused with `409 CONFLICT` and a message naming the fix; the file is left untouched.

| Method   | Path                          | Body                                                    | Notes                                                                                                   |
| -------- | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `GET`    | `/api/clis`                   | none                                                    | Every entry, disabled ones included: `id`, `label`, `shortBadge`, `order`, `kind`, `enabled`, `stock`, `installed`, and `installCommand` for a stock entry. Not gated; a non-admin in multi-user mode gets `[]`. |
| `PUT`    | `/api/clis/:id`               | `{ enabled }`                                           | Toggle an existing entry, stock or custom. `404` for an unknown id; `400 INVALID_INPUT` when disabling a `kind: 'shell'` entry. |
| `POST`   | `/api/clis/:id/install`       | none                                                    | Run a **stock** entry's install command (never a custom one: `400`). `409 CONFLICT` while an install for the same id is running; `422 OPERATION_FAILED` with the output tail when it fails. Never enables the entry. |
| `POST`   | `/api/clis`                   | `{ id, label, shortBadge, binaries, argv, enabled? }`   | Create a custom entry. `409 ALREADY_EXISTS` for a stock id or an existing custom id. `enabled` defaults to `true`. |
| `PUT`    | `/api/clis/custom/:id`        | `{ label, shortBadge, binaries, argv, enabled? }`       | Replace an existing custom entry. An absent `enabled` keeps the entry's current state. `400` for a stock id, `404` for an unknown one. |
| `DELETE` | `/api/clis/:id`               | none                                                    | Delete a custom entry. `400` for a stock id, `404` for an unknown one.                                  |

## MCP server sync

Copies MCP servers between the agent CLIs' own user-level config files (`docs/cli-registry.md`, "MCP server sync"). **Opt-in:** both routes answer `403 FORBIDDEN` while the synced `mcpSyncEnabled` setting is off (the default), and for a non-admin in multi-user mode, because the routes write files in the server user's home. A second `POST` while one is running answers `409 CONFLICT`.

| Method | Path            | Body | Notes                                                                                                                   |
| ------ | --------------- | ---- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `GET`  | `/api/mcp-sync` | none | Dry run. Same result shape as `POST`, with `applied: false`; nothing is written.                                        |
| `POST` | `/api/mcp-sync` | none | Adds each server a CLI is missing to that CLI's config file. Never edits or removes a server. `500` on an unexpected error. |

Result (`data`):

- `applied` — `false` for the dry run.
- `targets[]` — one per enabled CLI that declares an MCP config, including GitHub Copilot CLI (`id: "copilot"`; it is a run mode that declares its own `mcpConfig`, and a sync-only target takes its place only while that run mode is disabled): `id`, `label`, `file`, `status`, `error?`, `servers` (names it already has), `added` (names added, or that would be), `skipped` (names its dialect cannot express, e.g. SSE for Codex and Antigravity).
  - `status`: `ok`; `absent` (not installed and no config file, so not read or created); `skipped` (the CLI's relocation env var, e.g. `CODEX_HOME`, is set to a relative path in the server's environment, so its file cannot be located safely and is neither read nor written); `unreadable` (the file exists but cannot be parsed safely, so it is not written); `failed` (a read or write error, the file may be unchanged).
  - `error` says why a target is not `ok`. A parse failure is reported by position only (`not valid TOML (line 3, column 21)`, `not valid JSON`), never with text from the file.
  - `file` honours each CLI's own relocation env var as the server process sees it (`CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR`, `CODEX_HOME`, `XDG_CONFIG_HOME`, `GEMINI_CLI_HOME`, and `COPILOT_HOME` for the sync-only Copilot CLI); see `docs/cli-registry.md`.
- `conflicts[]` — names defined differently by different CLIs. Existing definitions are kept; the first CLI's is copied where the name is missing.
- `disabled[]` — names left out because every definition is switched off in its own CLI (codex `enabled = false`, opencode `enabled: false`, antigravity `disabled: true`).
- `unsupported[]` — labels of enabled agent CLIs with no known MCP config file (nothing is guessed).
  - Only installed CLIs are listed: one that is not installed is left out, as a supported CLI that is not installed reads `absent`.

The result carries server **names** only, never `env` values, `headers` or file content. Each changed file keeps its previous content as `<file>.codeman-bak` (overwritten by each sync); a file that receives servers carrying `env` or `headers` is left mode `0600`.

## Prompt-cache keep-warm

Claude Code reports the main conversation's prompt-cache state on its statusline (v2.1.251+); the exporter keeps it per session as `promptCache` on `GET /api/sessions` (`{ warm, ttl, expiresAt, recacheTokensIfCold, misses, lastMissCauses }`, epoch ms). The keep-warm sends one keep-alive turn shortly before an idle session's cache would expire; `keepWarmEnabled` (absent = the app-wide `promptCacheKeepWarm` setting applies, which a session spawned by another session does not inherit), the live `keepWarm` status and `lastRealPromptAt` (epoch ms of the last submit that was not a keep-alive, the cap's clock) ride the same session state. A keep-alive is a submit, so it moves `lastSubmitAt` like any prompt. A claude launch with keep-warm on also carries `"idleCompaction": false` in its `--settings` JSON (Claude Code 2.1.290 or newer).

| Method | Path                               | Body                                 | Notes |
| ------ | ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ----- |
| `POST` | `/api/v1/sessions/:id/keep-warm`   | `{ "enabled": true \| false \| null }` | Sets the session's choice; `null` clears it so the app-wide default applies. `200` with `{ keepWarm: { enabled, status } }`. `400 INVALID_INPUT` for a CLI that reports no cache telemetry on its statusline (anything but Claude today). |

`status` is `{ enabled, idleCompactionOff, state, nextCheckAt?, reason?, nudges, lastNudgeAt?, budgetEndsAt? }` (`idleCompactionOff`: whether the session's current launch carries that opt-out; `budgetEndsAt` only while `enabled`) with `state` one of `off`, `armed` (waiting for the due time), `waiting` (due, deferred by a guard named in `reason`), `nudged` (sent, waiting for the next cache report) or `stopped` (`reason` says why). Two SSE events carry changes: `session:promptCache` (`{ sessionId, ...promptCache }`) and `session:keepWarm` (`{ sessionId, ...status }`), both change-only. The keep-alive turn's `hook:stop` and `hook:idle_prompt` broadcasts carry `acknowledgedReason: "cache keep-alive"`, no push is sent for them and the run summary does not record them; an idle approval already pending stays as it was (only a person spends its alert). Its `session:working` and `session:idle` broadcasts carry `keepAlive: true`.

## Config backups

Timestamped snapshots of the files that hold what a user has customized (`src/config-backup.ts`). On by default; a snapshot is taken at startup and whenever the tracked files' content changes (checked every 5 minutes), so there is one entry per real change. All four routes are admin only in multi-user mode (`403`), because the files include credentials. Responses carry file names and sizes; only the diff returns values, and never a credential's.

Tracked files (a fixed list, relative to the data dir): `settings.json`, `clis.json`, `custom-model-hosts.json`, `webhook.json`, `intents.json`, `linked-cases.json`, `remote-hosts.json`, `remote-cases.json`, `docker-hosts.json`, `docker-cases.json`, `webviews.json`, `push-keys.json`, `users.json`, `.env`. Session state (`state.json`, which also holds cron jobs and respawn presets), logs, the hook secret and caches are not.

Settings (synced, in `settings.json`): `configBackupEnabled` (absent = on), `configBackupDir` (absolute path, `~` expanded; empty = `<data dir>/backups/config`), `configBackupKeepCount` (2–500, default 20), `configBackupKeepDays` (0–3650, default 30; `0` = no age limit). A key absent from `settings.json` means the retention the newest backup in the folder recorded, and the default only when none did. Retention only ever deletes snapshot folders Codeman made there, and never the newest one. Each snapshot is a `0700` folder named `cfg-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS` (server local time; `-2`, `-3`… on a same-second collision) holding the tracked files under their own names plus a `manifest.json` (`id`, `createdAt`, `reason` of `startup`/`auto`/`manual`/`pre-restore`, `appVersion`, the change-check `hash`, an `origin` id, the `keepCount` and `keepDays` in force, and a SHA-256 and size per file), all `0600`. A snapshot is never dated earlier than the instance's newest one, so a clock that read ahead once does not make every later pass write a copy. All four routes answer `503 OPERATION_FAILED` when a custom folder does not respond, and diff and restore answer `409` for a symlinked or group/world-accessible backup as well as a checksum mismatch. Only folders with that name and a valid manifest are listed, restored or pruned. Full guide: `docs/wiki/Config-Backups.md`.

| Method | Path                                 | Body | Notes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  |
| ------ | ------------------------------------ | ---- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `GET`  | `/api/config-backups`                | none | `settings` in effect, `dir`, `defaultDir`, `tracked[]` and `backups[]` (`id`, `createdAt`, `reason`, `appVersion`, `files[]`, `bytes`), newest first.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  |
| `POST` | `/api/config-backups`                | none | Snapshot now, even if nothing changed (`reason: manual`), then apply retention. `status` is `created` or `empty` (nothing tracked exists yet); `removed[]` lists the ids retention deleted. `503` when a custom folder does not answer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         |
| `GET`  | `/api/config-backups/diff?from=&to=` | none | What differs between two states: `from`/`to` are a backup id or `current` (the running config; the default for `to`). `files[]` (`name`, `status` `added`/`removed`/`changed`/`unchanged`, `changes[]` of `path`, `kind`, `before`/`after`, `truncated`, `detail`) and `changed`. Credential values are never returned (`redacted: true`). `400` without `from`; `404` unknown id; `409` if a file fails its checksum. |
| `POST` | `/api/config-backups/:id/restore`    | none | Put a snapshot's files back, atomically, after a `pre-restore` snapshot of the current ones (none when nothing changed since the newest backup). `404` unknown id; `409 CONFLICT` if a file fails its checksum (nothing changed). Returns `restored[]`, `untouched[]` (tracked files present now that the backup did not hold; left as they are), `safetySnapshot` (the `pre-restore` id, or the newest backup's when nothing had changed since it) and `restartRequired[]` (files the running server only reads at start: `.env`, `push-keys.json`, `settings.json`). A file that cannot be written (a full disk, a directory in its place) does not stop the others: the answer is then `500 OPERATION_FAILED` with the same fields in `data` plus `failed[]` (`name`, `error`); the files listed in `restored[]` are the backup's and are reloaded like a full restore.                                                                                                                                                              |

## Webhook notifications

Posts the Web Push events to ntfy, Slack, Discord or a generic JSON URL (Settings → Notifications). Off by default. The webhook URL is a bearer secret (anyone holding a Slack/Discord URL can post as it), so it lives in `~/.codeman/webhook.json` (0600), is **never returned**, and is kept out of `settings.json`. All three routes answer `403` for a non-admin in multi-user mode.

| Method | Path                 | Body                                         | Notes |
| ------ | -------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | ----- |
| `GET`  | `/api/webhook`       | none                                         | `{ enabled, kind, scope, hasUrl, urlMasked, lastResult }`. `urlMasked` is scheme + host only. `lastResult` is the last delivery (`ok`, `status?`, `error?`, `at`) or `null`. |
| `PUT`  | `/api/webhook`       | `{ enabled?, kind?, scope?, url? }` (strict) | `kind`: `ntfy` \| `slack` \| `discord` \| `generic`. `scope`: `attention` (skip "response complete") \| `all`. An absent `url` keeps the saved one; `""` clears it. `400` for a non-http(s) URL, `user:pass@`, a link-local or cloud-metadata target, or enabling with no URL. |
| `POST` | `/api/webhook/test`  | none                                         | Sends one message with the saved config, even while disabled. `200` with `data.ok` telling whether the webhook accepted it; `400` if no URL is saved. |

Delivery goes through the same egress guard as web tabs (refused on the resolved address too), does not follow redirects, times out after 5 s, sends the same event for the same session at most once per 3 s, and has at most 5 requests in flight. Error text never contains the URL.

## Discord bridge

One thread per tab in a private Discord channel, alerts out and replies typed back in. Setup (bot, least-privilege permissions, IDs) is in [discord-bridge.md](discord-bridge.md). The bot token is a bearer secret: stored in `~/.codeman/discord.json` (0600), never returned, and the three settings routes are admin only in multi-user mode.

| Method | Path | Body | Notes |
| ------ | ------ | ------ | ------ |
| `GET` | `/api/discord` | none | Config without the token, plus `hasToken`, `tokenMasked`, `gateway` (`off` \| `connecting` \| `connected` \| `error`), `gatewayError` and `lastResult`. |
| `PUT` | `/api/discord` | `{ enabled?, token?, guildId?, parentChannelId?, allowedUserIds?, threadCreation?, onSessionDelete?, staleThreads?, pingMode?, scope?, startupHint? }` (strict) | `threadCreation`: `lazy` \| `onSessionStart`. `onSessionDelete`: `keep` \| `archive` \| `delete`. `pingMode`: `off` \| `critical` \| `all`. `scope`: `attention` \| `all`. An absent `token` keeps the saved one; `""` clears it. `400` for a non-numeric id or enabling without a token, guild, channel and at least one allowed user. |
| `POST` | `/api/discord/test` | none | Posts one message to the parent channel with the saved config, even while disabled. `200` with `data.ok`; `400` if no token or channel is saved. |
| `POST` | `/api/sessions/:id/discord-notify` | `{ message, urgent?, file? }` (strict, message 1 to 1500 characters) | A CLI asks for the user: posts into that tab's thread, pinging when `urgent`. `file` is an absolute path inside the tab's working folder (real path, regular file, at most 8 MB, not on the attachment blocklist, local sessions only) uploaded with the post; `400` otherwise. A `200` carries the delivery result: `data.ok` is `false` (with `data.error`) when Discord refused or failed the post. `409` while the bridge is disabled, `429` past 6 posts a minute per tab. The `codeman notify "message" [--urgent] [--file path]` command wraps this route. |

Only replies from `allowedUserIds`, in `guildId`, inside a thread the bridge created are typed into a session, as one printable line plus Enter (a lone digit while a permission or question is pending goes as the key alone), at most one per second per tab. Attached files are saved under `.codeman-discord/` in the tab's folder and their paths appended to that line (see [discord-bridge.md](discord-bridge.md)).

## Diagnostics

`GET /api/doctor[?category=core|office|other]` returns the `codeman doctor --json` report (`platform`, `summary`, `tools[]` with `status` `ok` \| `missing` \| `outdated` \| `skipped` \| `error`, `version`, `path`, `installHint`). The probe engine is synchronous, so it runs in a child process of the same entry script, never on the server's event loop (30 s timeout). It names install paths and versions, so it is admin only in multi-user mode (`403`). `400` for an unknown category, `500` if the child produces no report.

## Local model

`GET /api/local-model` looks at the machine the server runs on and says which local coding model fits it, with which agent CLI, and where an install of one stands. Five verbs install a model, pause and continue the install, stop and start the model runtime, and remove everything again. It covers Apple silicon macOS only; anywhere else the GET is still a `200`, with verdict `none`, and nothing can be installed. How it works: [local-models.md](local-models.md).

**Experimental.** These routes and their payloads are labeled experimental: the fields below, the states, the error codes and the sentences may change or go in a MINOR or PATCH release (see [versioning-policy.md](versioning-policy.md), "What SemVer does NOT cover", item 3). Do not build on their shape yet.

Every route is admin only in multi-user mode (`403 FORBIDDEN`, answered before anything is probed, parsed or started): the GET names the host's hardware, and the verbs download and run a program, install an agent CLI and write the server-wide settings. There is no SSE event: the window polls the GET once a second while it is open.

| Method   | Path                       | Body                                             | Notes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  |
| -------- | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `GET`    | `/api/local-model`         | none                                             | `200` with `{ hardware, recommendation, catalogUpdated, install }`. `500 INTERNAL_ERROR` only when the recommendation itself fails, never for a failed probe.                                                                                             |
| `POST`   | `/api/local-model/install` | `{ modelId, cli, context, acknowledgedBytes }`   | Starts the one install job and answers at once; the job runs on in the server. `400 INVALID_INPUT` when the three choices are not a row the server offers right now. `409`: `job-running`, `already-installed`, `size-changed`.                         |
| `POST`   | `/api/local-model/cancel`  | none                                             | Interrupts the step in flight; the job is `paused` at that step. `409 wrong-state` when no job is running.                                                                                                                                                |
| `POST`   | `/api/local-model/resume`  | `{ newPort? }` (may be absent)                   | Continues a `paused` or `failed` job at the same step. `newPort: true` chooses another port first. `409`: `job-running`, `wrong-state`, `sessions-open` (`newPort` while live sessions use the model).                                                  |
| `POST`   | `/api/local-model/runtime` | `{ action: "start" \| "stop", newPort? }`        | `stop` stops the runtime and keeps it from starting at the next boot; `start` undoes that. `newPort: true` with `start` chooses another port and moves the saved endpoint to it. `409`: `job-running`, `wrong-state` (nothing is installed), `sessions-open` (`stop` or `newPort` while live sessions use the model: their agents keep calling the address they were started with). |
| `DELETE` | `/api/local-model`         | `{ removeModel? }` (may be absent)               | Stops the runtime, removes the saved endpoint, restores the settings flag when this feature switched it on and no other endpoint is saved, deletes the runtime; the model only with `removeModel: true`. `409`: `job-running`, `sessions-open`.        |

Every verb answers `{ success: true, data: <install> }` with the `install` object (below) as it is after the verb. A refusal the feature names is a `409` whose envelope also carries the conflict:

```json
{
  "success": false,
  "error": "The download is 23.3 GB now. Check the sizes and confirm again.",
  "errorCode": "CONFLICT",
  "data": {
    "reason": "size-changed",
    "message": { "text": "The download is {size} GB now. Check the sizes and confirm again.", "vars": { "size": "23.3" } },
    "expectedBytes": 23291770627,
    "expectedGb": "23.3"
  }
}
```

`data.reason` is `job-running`, `already-installed` (remove the installed model first), `size-changed` (with `expectedBytes` and `expectedGb`), `sessions-open` (with `sessions`, the names of the live sessions that use the model) or `wrong-state`. A `409 CONFLICT` without `data` means a config file that must not be overwritten (`settings.json` or `custom-model-hosts.json` does not parse); `error` names the fix.

`POST /api/local-model/install` also answers `400` when a saved model endpoint already uses the id `local-ollama` and was not created by this feature: rename or delete that endpoint first. The check is made before anything is downloaded. Every `400` the install names, and the `507 OPERATION_FAILED` of a first install on a full disk, carries its sentence as `data.message` (`{ text, vars }`, like a `409`), so a client can print it in its own language.

**Consent is bound to the size shown.** `acknowledgedBytes` must be the `installBytes` of the chosen row: the model download plus the runtime download while the runtime is not unpacked yet. The server compares it with its own total before anything starts and answers `409 size-changed` when they differ, so a click confirms exactly the size the person saw.

A probe that fails is an answer, not an error: a server that is not on macOS, or a Mac whose `sysctl` call failed or timed out, still gets a `200`, and `hardware.source` says what was read.

`data`:

- `hardware`: what the server sees of the machine it runs on.
  - `platform`, `arch`: `process.platform` and `os.arch()` of the server process. `arm64: true` means the machine is Apple silicon whatever `arch` says; `translated: true` means the server process runs under Rosetta.
  - `memBytes`, `memGb` (the bytes as decimal GB text, `"51.5"` for a 48 GB Mac) and `memClassGb` (the memory size the Mac is sold as: 16, 32, 48; `0` when the size could not be read). `memClassGb` is what to show as the installed memory: it is the number on the box and in About This Mac. It is the one size here that is not decimal GB.
  - `chip`, `model`, `macosVersion`, `macosMajor`, `wiredLimitMb` (`0` means not set), `freeDiskBytes` and `freeDiskGb` (free space on the filesystem of Codeman's data directory). Each is absent when it could not be read.
  - `source`: `sysctl` (the one bounded `sysctl` call answered), `os-fallback` (macOS, but that call failed: memory, architecture, the chip name and the free disk space come from Node, and nothing only `sysctl` knows, such as `arm64`, `translated`, `model`, `macosVersion`, `macosMajor` or `wiredLimitMb`, is present) or `not-probed` (not macOS, nothing was run).
- `recommendation`:
  - `verdict`: `ok`, `limited` or `none`. `limited` is a statement about the Mac: no model with 12 billion parameters or more fits its memory, so what it can run handles small edits and questions and does not replace a cloud model. It is judged on every model that fits, before the free disk space is looked at and whatever the pick is. With `ok` the pick can still be a small model (a larger one may be slow, have no speed figure or have no room on the disk); `notes` then says so.
  - `reason`, present only with `none`: `not-macos`, `intel`, `memory`, `disk`, `macos` (too old) or `no-harness` (no agent CLI that can be connected to a local model is installed or installable). `memory` has three sentences: nothing fits at all (slot `memory`, the size the Mac is sold as), a model fits but only below the context length an agent CLI needs (slots `budget` and `need`, so a Mac that misses by a little reads as that), and the memory size could not be read (no slot).
  - `headline` and `notes[]`: `{ text, vars? }`. `text` is an English sentence that may hold `{placeholder}` slots, and `vars` carries the slot values as text. Notes, in order: the pick is a small model although larger ones fit (verdict `ok` only); a model that fits the memory was left out because its download would not leave 10 GiB free on the disk (slots `model` and `missing`: the best-ranked such model and the GB to free up); nobody tested the pick on a Mac like this one.
  - `pick` (absent with `none`) and `alternatives[]` (at most four, best first; empty with `none`), each one model at one context length with one agent CLI. The order: a pair tested on a Mac like this one first, then speed (`ok` before `unknown` before `slow`), then the model's rank, the agent CLI's rank and the larger context. The memory fit decides whether a row is listed and what it says (`fit`, `tag`), it does not sort, so a model is offered at the largest context it fits at. A model whose download would leave less than 10 GiB free on the disk is not listed (an unknown free disk space excludes nothing):
    - `modelId` (`name:tag`), `modelLabel`, `license`, `paramsB` (parameters in billions), `context` (tokens);
    - `cli`, `cliLabel`, `cliInstalled` (`false`: the CLI is not on this machine yet but can be installed without administrator rights), `slowFirstTurn?`;
    - `needBytes` and `needGb` (memory the model needs at that context, at its PEAK: the weights, what stays held per token of context, what the runner holds beside both, and what it takes for a moment while a long prompt is processed), `needSource` (`measured`: the figures were measured for this model on a Mac; `estimated`: they are another model's), `downloadBytes` and `downloadGb`, `budgetShare` (need divided by `budgetBytes`, rounded to three decimals);
    - `installBytes` and `installGb`: the whole download a click on Install starts for this row, `downloadBytes` plus the runtime archive while the runtime is not unpacked. It is the number to send as `acknowledgedBytes`;
    - `harnesses[]`: every agent CLI the model can be run with at this context, best first: `{ cli, cliLabel, installed, installCommand?, slowFirstTurn? }`. `installCommand` is the literal command the install would run for a CLI that is not installed (the release's own stock command), for the consent screen. The first entry is the one the flat `cli` fields name;
    - `tag?`: `{ kind, label }`, the one tag of the row. `kind` is `tested`, `best`, `tight`, `slow` or `small`;
    - `fit`: `good` (up to 0.85 of the budget) or `tight` (up to 0.98), with its label `fitLabel`;
    - `speed`: `ok`, `slow` (under 10 tokens per second) or `unknown`, with `speedLabel` (absent for `ok`) and `tokensPerSecond` (rounded to one decimal, absent for `unknown`; `speed` is decided on the unrounded figure, so `10` can be `slow`). `unknown` means the chip is in no row of the catalogue's chip table, or the catalogue has no speed figure for the model: a speed is never guessed;
    - `tested`: we ran this model with this CLI on a Mac like this one (same chip, same memory size). Its `tokensPerSecond` is then the speed measured in that run.
  - `budgetBytes` and `budgetGb`: the memory a model may use on this Mac (`0` for `not-macos` and `intel`, where none is computed). `budgetSource` is `estimated` (computed from the installed memory: all there is before the runtime ran), `wired-limit` (taken from `iogpu.wired_limit_mb`) or `measured` (the device total the runtime itself printed when it started; the GET uses it from the first install on).
- `catalogUpdated`: ISO date on which the catalogue's rows were last checked.
- `install`: where the install stands and what can be done about it.
  - `state`: `idle` (nothing installed, no job), `installing`, `paused` (Cancel or a server restart stopped the job; it never continues without a click), `failed` or `installed`.
  - `step` and `steps[]` (present with `installing`, `paused` and `failed`): the step the job is in or stopped in, and the steps of this job in order, out of `runtime`, `model`, `verify`, `agent`, `connect`. `agent` is absent from a job whose agent CLI was already installed.
  - `progress` (while a download runs, and as it stood on a paused or failed job): `completedBytes`, `totalBytes`, `completedGb`, `totalGb`, and while it moves `bytesPerSecond`, `mbPerSecond` (whole decimal megabytes per second as text) and `secondsLeft`. During the `model` step both byte figures come from the download's own lines, not from the catalogue.
  - `error` (with `failed`; with `installed` only when something blocks a session): `{ code, message: { text, vars? }, next, nextModel?, detail? }`. `next` is the ONE action that helps: `retry` (`POST .../resume`), `other-port` (`POST .../resume` or `.../runtime` with `newPort: true`), `next-model` (choose again; `nextModel` is `{ modelId, modelLabel }` when the server knows one), `start` (`POST .../runtime`) or `remove` (`DELETE`). `detail` is raw text for the curious (an installer's last lines), not translated.
  - `model` (`{ id, label }`), `cli`, `cliLabel`, `context`: the choice of the job or of the installation. `port`: the runtime's loopback port, once chosen.
  - `running`: the runtime Codeman started is alive right now. A runtime the person stopped is `running: false` with no `error`.
  - `loaded` (with `installed`): what the runtime reported when the job checked the loaded model: `context`, `memoryBytes`, `memoryGb`, `onGpu`.
  - `endpointId` (with `installed`): the saved model endpoint a session is started on, with `cli`.
  - `developerTools`: `present`, `missing` (the Mac has no Xcode or Command Line Tools, so macOS will offer to install them the first time an agent runs `git` or `python3`) or `unknown`.
  - `runtime`: `{ version, installed, downloadBytes, downloadGb, unpackedGb }`. `downloadBytes` is `0` once the runtime is unpacked.
  - `folder`: the absolute folder everything of this feature is kept in.
  - `actions[]`: exactly what the server accepts right now, out of `install`, `cancel`, `resume`, `start`, `stop`, `remove` and `start-session` (not a route here: start a session on `endpointId`; offered only while the runtime runs and nothing blocks a session).

Error codes (`install.error.code`), each with one next step:

| Next step    | Codes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `retry`      | `runtime-download-failed`, `runtime-damaged`, `runtime-unpack-failed`, `runtime-start-failed`, `disk-full`, `pull-failed`, `context-not-applied`, `load-failed`, `probe-unfinished`, `harness-failed`, `endpoint-id-taken`, `connect-failed`, `internal` |
| `start`      | `runtime-stopped` (the runtime crashed three times in a row and is no longer restarted)                                                                                                                                                 |
| `other-port` | `port-in-use`                                                                                                                                                                                                                           |
| `next-model` | `model-not-found`, `does-not-fit`, `no-tool-call`                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| `remove`     | `model-changed` (the model's digest is no longer the one stored at install time; a session on it is refused)                                                                                                                            |

Starting a session on the saved endpoint goes through the existing custom model launch (`POST /api/quick-start` with `customModel`, or `POST /api/sessions/:id/custom-model`). For the endpoint this feature manages both answer `OPERATION_FAILED` with one sentence while the runtime is not running, when the model's digest changed, or for a model other than the installed one.

Every computed size a person reads travels twice: as bytes, and as decimal GB text without the unit (`"needGb": "29.6"`). Show the text and add the unit; do not divide the bytes yourself, so one request never shows two different roundings. The installed memory is the exception named above: show `memClassGb`.

## Voice dictation

Browser dictation transcribed through this server's Claude Code login, i.e. the
same speech-to-text service the CLI's own `/voice` mode uses. Gated on the synced
`claudeVoiceEnabled` setting (default OFF). Design:
[`claude-voice-plan.md`](claude-voice-plan.md).

- `GET /api/v1/voice/status` -> `{ available, reason?, subscriptionType?,
  expiresAt? }`. `reason` is `disabled` (setting off), `no-credentials` (nobody
  signed in to Claude Code on the server), `expired` (the access token elapsed;
  running any Claude session refreshes it) or `malformed`. The OAuth token
  itself is never returned by this or any other endpoint.
- `GET /ws/voice/stream?language=&keyterms=` (WebSocket, not under `/api`)
  relays one dictation. Client sends binary frames of signed 16-bit
  little-endian PCM, 16 kHz mono (<= 64 KB per frame), plus JSON control frames
  `{"t":"finalize"}` (ask for the final transcript) and `{"t":"stop"}`. Server
  sends `{"t":"ready"}`, `{"t":"transcript","text","final"}` (each frame is the
  WHOLE running transcript, not a delta), `{"t":"error","message"}` and
  `{"t":"closed"}`. Close codes: `4003` disallowed Host/Origin, `4004`
  unavailable (reason in the close reason), `4008` too many concurrent streams.
  Streams are capped in count and length (`src/config/voice.ts`).

## Authentication

Optional HTTP Basic (`CODEMAN_USERNAME`/`CODEMAN_PASSWORD`) → opaque
`codeman_session` cookie. When enabled, unauthenticated requests get
`401 UNAUTHORIZED`; rate-limited requests get `429 RATE_LIMITED`. See
[`security-architecture.md`](security-architecture.md).

## SSE event channel

`GET /api/events` is a Server-Sent Events stream (`text/event-stream`); each
message is `event: <name>` + `data: <json>`. The event-name registry
(`src/web/sse-events.ts`, mirrored in `src/web/public/constants.js`) is part of
the stable contract — event names are not renamed without a major bump. An
optional `?sessions=<id,...>` filter suppresses only the high-volume terminal
stream; lifecycle/metadata events are delivered to all clients regardless.

### `sse:heartbeat` (liveness)

Every 15s the server writes a `sse:heartbeat` frame to every connected client:

```
event: sse:heartbeat
data: {"t":1755100000000}
```

`t` is the server's epoch-ms timestamp at write time. The frame carries no
application state and can be ignored for correctness. It exists so a client can
tell a live stream from a dead one: an `EventSource` whose connection has been
idle-closed by a proxy (or that resumed from sleep on a stale socket) keeps
delivering nothing without ever firing `onerror`. Clients that care should treat
silence longer than about three intervals as a dead stream and reconnect, which
is what the bundled frontend does.

This replaced a `:keepalive` SSE **comment**, which served the same
proxy-flushing purpose but is invisible to `EventSource` by spec and so could
never be observed by a client. Consumers written against the old behavior are
unaffected: `EventSource` dispatches only events that have a registered
listener, so an unknown event name is dropped.

## Consuming from JavaScript

The bundled frontend reads responses through `_apiJson()`
(`src/web/public/api-client.js`), which unwraps `{success:true,data}` → `data` and
returns `null` on a non-2xx / `{success:false}` response. External clients should
do the same: check the HTTP status (or `body.success`), then read `body.data`.