Daemonitor

Activity Monitor for your Gradle daemons — what's building now, and what built recently.

Daemonitor watches the Gradle-related JVMs on your machine: daemons, wrappers, Kotlin daemons, and test workers. Use the desktop app for a full Activity Monitor UI, or the CLI for the same live view in a terminal (including over SSH).

Everything stays local. Command lines and logs are redacted before storage. The only outbound network use is GitHub Releases update checks and installer downloads you approve.

Website: https://cdsap.github.io/daemonitor/ · CLI options: https://cdsap.github.io/daemonitor/cli.html

Grab the installer for your OS from GitHub Releases:

Asset names include the CPU architecture (x64 or arm64), for example Daemonitor-1.1.0-macos-arm64.dmg. No project-local Gradle setup is required.

On Linux, prefer the .deb for installs and the .tar.gz for writable standalone updates. See Linux Update Distribution.

brew tap cdsap/tap
brew trust cdsap/tap   # Homebrew 7+
brew install daemonitor-cli
daemonitor-cli

Needs JDK 21 (openjdk@21 is installed as a Homebrew dependency). The CLI prefers daemonitor-cored by default (auto-starts when packaged/on PATH); use --jvm-collector for the legacy in-process collector. You can also download daemonitor-cli-*.zip from Releases.

Full flag reference: CLI options on the website.

• Gradle-related JVMs by type (daemon, wrapper, Kotlin daemon, test worker, other)
• RSS, live heap (when Attach/JMX works), CPU, and uptime
• Summary tiles, memory-pressure badges, and a detail panel with log tail
• Switch to terminal collection from the toolbar when you want a lighter footprint

First-poll CPU shows … / sampling… until a delta exists; 0% means idle after that. Live heap stays n/a for wrappers and test workers (daemons only). More detail: JVM heap collection.

Same core monitor in your terminal — useful on build machines and over SSH:

daemonitor-cli
ssh -t build-machine daemonitor-cli

Press q to quit. Desktop and CLI share the same local database and retention settings. Packaged desktop apps also accept --headless for a similar terminal mode.

Rolling RSS / live-heap timelines with configured -Xmx when known. Click the legend to hide or focus a series.

Reconstructed builds with duration, peak RSS, status, source, and coding-agent attribution when detectable. Filter by project and time range.

A local, read-only MCP server so agent tools can inspect history and current processes — same SQLite database, same redaction rules. Enable it in Settings, then paste the URL and token into your MCP client. Details and examples: website and the MCP section below.

./gradlew run                 # desktop app
./gradlew runHeadless         # terminal mode via the desktop module
./gradlew :cli:run --args="--help"

Standalone CLI without Compose:

./gradlew :cli:installDist
build/install/daemonitor-cli/bin/daemonitor-cli

Requires JDK 17+ to run Gradle (the build uses a Java 21 toolchain). Daemonitor needs permission to read your process list and Gradle daemon logs under ~/.gradle/daemon/<version>/.

At startup (and from Settings) Daemonitor checks GitHub Releases. When a newer version is available, Settings shows (1). After you approve a download it verifies the SHA-256 checksum, then stages Restart and Update or opens the platform installer. It never installs silently while running.

1. Open Daemonitor → Settings
2. Enable MCP
3. Copy the local URL and token into your client

HTTP example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "daemonitor": {
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:17333/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <token from Daemonitor Settings>"
      }
    }
  }
}

The server binds to 127.0.0.1 only. Keep Daemonitor open while connected. It is read-only.

For stdio clients, use the packaged launcher with --mcp (not ./gradlew run — Gradle stdout corrupts MCP messages):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "daemonitor": {
      "command": "/Applications/Daemonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/Daemonitor",
      "args": ["--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Tools: daemonitor_search_history, daemonitor_builds_for_process, daemonitor_current_processes.

1. Process polling (OSHI, every 2s) — RSS, CPU, uptime, JVM flags
2. Daemon-log parsing — build start/end, outcome, working directory, env-var names for source/agent attribution

Builds are reconstructed from a daemon's busy→idle window matched to samples in that window, then stored in local SQLite and purged by retention (default 15 days, range 1–90). Lowering retention deletes older rows and incrementally compacts the database.

Contains watcher.db and settings.properties.

Agent attribution uses env-var names in the daemon log (never values). Known agents: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Aider. Ambient variables from Daemonitor's own process are ignored.

./gradlew test
./gradlew packageDmg   # macOS
./gradlew packageMsi   # Windows
./gradlew packageDeb   # Linux

Tag releases publish installers, per-platform daemonitor-cli-*-<os>-<arch>.zip, standalone daemonitor-cored-* binaries, latest.json, update.json, and checksums. See docs/update-metadata.md.

Refresh desktop README screenshots after UI changes:

./gradlew captureReadmeScreenshots test

Review docs/images/ before committing (synthetic samples only).

Stack: Kotlin · Compose for Desktop · OSHI · SQLDelight · Coroutines

Privacy: Local-only storage, redacted command lines/logs, owner-only database. Outbound traffic is limited to GitHub Releases checks and downloads you approve.

Status: Early (v1.1.0). See requirements.md for the original spec.