Setup Mac Fleet

Setup Mac Fleet

Use this skill when the user asks to set up or deploy a new mac fleet and ~/.mac/fleets.yaml or ~/.mac/.env is missing, or asks how to deploy an agent onto a specific host type (bare metal, VM, or container).

Rules

• Do not invent agent names, hostnames, IP addresses, Slack channel names, or model selectors.
• Do not commit fleet topology or secrets. Fleet topology belongs in ~/.mac/fleets.yaml; local deploy secrets belong in ~/.mac/.env.
• Provider API keys (NVIDIA_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, etc.) belong in ~/.mac/.env — the wizard collects them and deployment configures the selected runtime. Do not put them in fleet YAML or any committed file.
• Keep committed fleet examples generic. Personal fleets must live only in the home-scoped fleet registry.
• The host type is not its own deploy command — it is a combination of OS, supervisor, and SSH transport. Pick those (or let auto detect), then use the same deploy commands below.

Workflow

1. Run the wizard:

   bash setup.sh
   

2. If the user wants a non-default path, pass explicit paths:

   bash setup.sh --fleets-config ~/.mac/fleets.yaml --env-file ~/.mac/.env
   

3. The wizard opens with two required questions before anything else:

   • "Are you running this on the machine being configured?" — skips SSH target prompts and adjusts the Next-step instructions when yes.
   • "Setting up a hub or a worker?" — required, no default.
     • hub: creates a new fleet entry. The wizard asks for fleet topology, supervisor, Slack channel, per-agent Hermes models, worker mode, canary policy, shared Qdrant readiness, fleet network provider (Tailscale default; Headscale needs explicit login server, enrollment-key source, DNS assumption, and health URL), and at least one upstream LLM provider (nvidia / openai / anthropic / perplexity — API key required, base URL optional). The loop does not exit until at least one provider is entered.
     • worker: looks up the existing fleet by hub name, then asks only for the new worker's name, SSH target, OS, supervisor, mode, and canary policy.

4. setup.sh is the one-pass entrypoint. By default it writes the fleet registry/env file, sources the generated env file, and deploys the selected hub or worker immediately.

   To configure without deploying:

   bash setup.sh --configure-only
   

   Existing fleet deploy commands can still be run through setup.sh:

   bash setup.sh --hub <hub-node> [agent ...]
   bash setup.sh --new-hub <hub-node> --target user@host[:port]
   

   Provider configuration in ~/.mac/.env is forwarded through the deployment transport. Inspect the selected runtime's configuration when diagnosing credentials; the current path does not promise a TokenHub credential store.

5. If asked to inspect or edit the fleet later, edit ~/.mac/fleets.yaml, not deploy/fleet/config.yaml.

HGX direct worker access

Treat HGX as an additional direct SSH path for provider-managed workers, not as an assumed dependency:

1. Confirm $HOME/.local/bin/hgx is present and executable.
2. Run $HOME/.local/bin/hgx list and use HGX only when it returns a worker relevant to the requested fleet operation.
3. Resolve the worker by immutable HGX session ID, especially when display names are duplicated or an instance has been recreated.
4. Connect with $HOME/.local/bin/hgx ssh <session-id>.

When working interactively and HGX is not authenticated, run $HOME/.local/bin/hgx login, then retry hgx list. Do not launch that interactive login flow from unattended automation; report the authentication requirement instead.

HGX does not replace ~/.mac/fleets.yaml as the registered MAC topology. After using HGX to recover or replace a worker, reconcile its endpoint and attested agent identity into the fleet registry so later deploy and SSH operations do not use stale routing.

Trust model: bootstrap transport and point-to-point SSH

Initial host bootstrap — for every domain (local, internal, or HGX-provisioned external/remote) — must run over that domain's configured transport: direct SSH for a local or internal host, hgx ssh for an HGX-provisioned remote host. That transport is the only trusted, secure channel that can run commands directly on the host and set it up; there is no lower-trust fallback, and provider code must not invent one (e.g. don't accept an unauthenticated HTTP endpoint, an in-cluster service DNS name with no credential, or a "just curl it" shortcut as a substitute for bootstrapping over SSH/hgx ssh).

What that bootstrap buys you is narrower than it looks: a working hub with its own MAC_API_TOKEN, which can then be fetched (see step 3 of QUICKDEMO.md) and handed to the other fleet members being brought up. Beyond that, SSH access from the provisioner (the operator session running setup.sh / make deploy) to every agent is still assumed to work point-to-point — bringing up the hub does not give the hub, or the provisioner, any new way to reach a worker. Each worker's bootstrap is a separate direct-SSH (or hgx ssh) operation from the provisioner, exactly like the hub's was.

Known gap / future optimization (not implemented): the hub could generate its own SSH keypair during bootstrap and have that public key appended to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on each worker as part of worker bootstrap. That would let the hub reach and repair a worker on its own — independent of the original provisioner's SSH access — instead of every post-bootstrap fix needing to be re-run by whoever provisioned the fleet. Track this as a fleet-management feature, not something to assume exists today.

Agent host types

The system runs the MAC control plane and worker with a separately installed, configured gateway runtime on three host types. Hermes is the committed default; its stock gateway is installed through deploy/hermes/install-hermes-gateway.sh, not a vendored src/mac/_hermes tree. deploy/deploy-mac-fleet.sh is the single deploy path for all three; what changes per host is OS, supervisor, and SSH transport. The wizard records these per node (OS, supervisor, target, and the fleet's ssh_jump / network provider). Re-deploy any node with:

make deploy HUB=<node>           # or: bash setup.sh --hub <node>

Mechanism shared by all host types. The operator's local checkout HEAD is the deployed revision (git -C <repo> rev-parse HEAD → MAC_DEPLOY_GIT_REV): the script ships a release archive over SSH (and/or clones MAC_DEPLOY_GIT_URL@<branch> then checks out that rev on the node), installs into ~/.mac/venv + ~/.mac/src, writes env/topology, and (re)starts services under the node's supervisor. Existing source + venv are backed up under ~/.mac/backups/ first, so a bad deploy is recoverable. → Run the deploy from the checkout whose origin is the fork that host runs and whose HEAD is the rev you intend to ship; deploying a stale HEAD rolls the node backward.

Supervisor (--supervisor, wizard "supervisor", or auto). Auto-detect in deploy-mac-fleet.sh:

• OS=darwin → launchd
• Linux with systemctl and /run/systemd/system → systemd
• otherwise (e.g. inside a container) → supervisord (/etc/supervisor/conf.d or /etc/supervisord.d)

Hub reachability. Mesh-joined hosts (Tailscale/Headscale) use the hub's mesh URL directly. A spoke that cannot reach the hub directly (e.g. an in-cluster pod) instead registers through a hub-managed reverse tunnel (http://127.0.0.1:<port>); the deploy log says either "using tailscale hub URL …; skipping reverse tunnel" or "restarted mac-agent with tunnel now available".

Bare-metal agents

• A physical host with a full init system.
• OS: linux (or darwin for a Mac). Supervisor: systemd on Linux, launchd on macOS — or auto.
• Transport: direct SSH (target user@host[:port]), normally on a Tailscale/Headscale mesh so the agent reaches the hub at its mesh IP.
• Deploy: make deploy HUB=<node>; first hub on a fresh box: bash setup.sh --new-hub <node> --target user@host.
• Example: the mac fleet hub hub (<user>@<host>) — Linux, systemd, Tailscale hub URL http://<tailscale-ip>:8789.

Virtual-machine agents

• A cloud or local VM. To the deploy tooling this is identical to bare metal — a host with an OS and an init system reached over SSH. There is no VM-specific branch; treat a VM as a bare-metal host of the same OS.
• OS / supervisor: linux+systemd or darwin+launchd (or auto).
• Transport: direct SSH or Tailscale/Headscale mesh.
• Deploy: same commands as bare metal.
• Example: mac fleet workers worker-1 / worker-2 — Linux VMs/hosts under systemd, joined to the fleet mesh and reached by SSH.

Containerized agents

An agent inside a container/pod with no init system. Two supported models:

1. SSH-into-pod + supervisord (operate the pod like a host). The pod runs sshd; the deploy reaches it over SSH and supervises the agent with supervisord. In-cluster pods (in-cluster DNS such as *.svc.cluster.local) are reached via a bastion ProxyJump declared fleet-wide in ~/.mac/fleets.yaml:

   ssh_jump: "user@bastion.example:2222"
   

   deploy-mac-fleet.sh applies -o ProxyJump=<jump> automatically (no ~/.ssh/config edits), and the deploy prints ==> ssh: operator->node via -o ProxyJump=…. Spokes register to the hub through the reverse tunnel rather than a mesh IP.

   • OS: linux. Supervisor: supervisord (auto selects it when systemd is absent).
   • Deploy: the same make deploy HUB=<node>; the fleet's ssh_jump routes it through the bastion.
   • Worked example: the generic GKE sample deploy/fleet/samples/gke.fleet.yaml — hub pod gke-hub + workers gke-worker-1/2 under supervisord, reached via the bastion ProxyJump, workers registering through the reverse tunnel. Copy it with scripts/setup-fleet.py --init-from gke --name <fleet>, fill in the <placeholders>, then --spec ~/.mac/specs/<fleet>.fleet.yaml. The same mac.fleet_setup.v1 schema covers EKS/AKS/OKE; see deploy/fleet/samples/README.md. (Real, named fleets live outside git in ~/.mac/specs/ — never check one in.)

2. K8s-native, image-based (deploy/k8s/). A stateless mac-api Deployment plus a mac-runner orchestrator that creates one Job per task, backed by an externally-managed Postgres (MAC_DATABASE_URL). Here the unit of deploy is a container image, not an SSH push:

   scripts/build-and-push-image.sh --registry <registry>   # build + push
   kubectl apply -k deploy/k8s/mac-api                      # and mac-runner
   

   or sync via ArgoCD from a platform-config repo. Use this for horizontally-scaled, no-SSH clusters. See deploy/k8s/README.md.

Validation

Before deploy, run:

bash -n deploy/deploy-mac-fleet.sh
bash -n deploy/install-qdrant-service.sh
bash -n deploy/install-tailscale.sh
bash -n deploy/install-headscale.sh
.venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/test_deploy_agent_configs.py tests/test_hermes_startup.py

When touching the K8s-native (image-based container) path, also validate the manifests render:

kubectl kustomize deploy/k8s/mac-api >/dev/null
kubectl kustomize deploy/k8s/mac-runner >/dev/null