Swain Helm

swain-helm

Manages the swain-helm bridge system: starts the watchdog daemon, registers projects, monitors health, and tears down cleanly. The watchdog is a persistent process that reconciles desired state — ensuring project bridges and opencode serve are running.

Locate the CLI

REPO_ROOT="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null || pwd)"
HELM="$REPO_ROOT/bin/swain-helm"

If not found at that path, glob for **/bin/swain-helm.

Runtime files

Commands

host up ("start bridge" / "helm up" / default)

Start the watchdog daemon. Resolves 1Password credentials at startup (requires biometric unlock):

swain-helm host up

Foreground mode for debugging:

swain-helm host up --foreground

The watchdog discovers project configs, starts bridges, and finds or starts opencode serve. If 1Password is locked, the command fails with a clear error.

host down ("stop bridge" / "helm down" / "shut down bridge")

swain-helm host down

Stops the watchdog and all project bridges. Use --project <name> to stop only one bridge:

swain-helm host down --project swain

host status ("helm status" / "is the bridge running" / "bridge health")

swain-helm host status

Reports: watchdog PID, each bridge PID and health, opencode serve port/health/auth status.

host provision ("provision bridge" / "setup bridge")

One-time setup: registers Zulip bot, creates stream, writes helm.config.json:

swain-helm host provision

project add ("add project" / "register project")

Register a project for the watchdog to manage:

swain-helm project add ./             # current directory (rejects if no .git/)
swain-helm project add ~/code/swain    # absolute path

Writes ~/.config/swain-helm/projects/<name>.json. The watchdog picks it up on the next reconciliation cycle (every 30s).

project remove ("remove project")

swain-helm project remove --project swain

Removes the project config. The watchdog stops the bridge on the next cycle.

project list ("list projects")

swain-helm project list

Shows all registered projects with their running status.

logs ("helm logs" / "show bridge logs" / "what is the bridge doing")

Tail the watchdog log:

tail -50 /tmp/swain-helm.log

For continuous streaming, tell the operator to run tail -f /tmp/swain-helm.log in their terminal.

restart ("restart bridge" / "helm restart")

Stop then start:

swain-helm host down && swain-helm host up

After starting

Show the operator:

1. Bridge status (from host status output).
2. How to attach: opencode attach http://127.0.0.1:<PORT>.
3. Zulip stream to use for sending prompts.
4. Log path for monitoring: /tmp/swain-helm.log.

Error handling

• If bin/swain-helm is not found, tell the operator the untethered package may not be installed and point to RUNBOOK-004.
• If 1Password is locked at startup, report clearly: "Unlock 1Password and retry."
• If opencode serve fails the health check, show the last 20 lines of /tmp/opencode-serve.log.
• Never fail silently — always report what was attempted and what failed.