Autonomous Daemon Mode

Run Clew as a 24/7 background daemon — task queue, agent loop, health checks, and supervisor auto-respawn for unattended autonomous operation.

The autonomous system lives in src/services/autonomous/ and consists of four main components: the task queue, agent loop, daemon entry point, and supervisor integration.

Architecture

  + Task Queue (taskQueue.ts)
  |    File-backed persistent queue
  |    Priorities Leases Dead-letter
  |
  + Agent Loop (agentLoop.ts)
  |    Dequeue Spawn worker Monitor Retry
  |
  + Daemon Mode (daemonMode.ts)
  |    Background process entry point
  |
  + Supervisor (supervisorIntegration.ts)
       Health checks Auto-respawn State tracking

Task Queue

The file-backed persistent queue (src/services/autonomous/taskQueue.ts) is the foundation of the autonomous system:

• Persistence — Tasks survive process restarts via on-disk storage
• Priorities — Urgent tasks skip ahead in the queue
• Leases — Tasks are leased to workers with TTL; expired leases are retried
• Dead-letter — Tasks that exhaust retries are moved to dead-letter for inspection
• Scheduling — One-shot and recurring (cron) tasks supported

Agent Loop

The continuous agent loop (src/services/autonomous/agentLoop.ts) runs in the background:

1. Dequeue — Pull the highest-priority ready task
2. Spawn worker — Launch a worker session for the task
3. Monitor — Track progress, streaming output, and resource usage
4. Retry or complete — On failure, retry with backoff; on success, record result
5. Repeat — Check for new tasks and repeat the cycle

Daemon Entry Point

src/services/autonomous/daemonMode.ts provides the background process entry point. When started in daemon mode, Clew:

• Detaches from the terminal and runs as a background process
• Logs output to a configurable log file
• Responds to signals for graceful shutdown
• Reports status to the supervisor for health tracking

Supervisor Integration

src/services/autonomous/supervisorIntegration.ts ensures the daemon stays running:

• Health checks — Periodic heartbeat and resource checks
• Auto-respawn — Automatic restart on unexpected exit
• State tracking — Current status, running tasks, error counts
• Graceful degradation — Reduces polling frequency on repeated failures

Commands

Task Scheduling

Scheduled tasks can be created through the interactive /task form or programmatically. Storage modes:

• Durable — Persists to .claude/scheduled_tasks.json, survives restarts
• Session-only — Kept in memory for the current session only

Recurring tasks auto-expire after 30 days. One-shot tasks auto-delete after firing. Custom cron expressions are supported (standard 5-field format).

/task
Name: Deploy health check
Schedule: Daily
Time: 09:00
Prompt: Check deployment status and report
Storage: Durable

Architecture Files