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The NSP daemon (axon-daemon) is the background process that powers every NSP integration on your machine. Once running, it continuously monitors your OS processes, extracts live semantic state from supported applications, and exposes that state — along with the ability to execute actions — through a local HTTP API that your agents call. You install it once, and it handles the rest automatically.

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What the Daemon Does

The daemon performs six core functions while it runs:

Watches Processes

Continuously scans running OS processes to detect and classify supported applications as they open and close.

Probes Runtimes

Inspects each tracked application’s runtime to extract its live semantic state — the data your agents act on.

Caches State

Maintains an in-memory cache of the latest state for every tracked process, so agent reads are always fast.

Serves the API

Runs the NSP Agent API on localhost:7842, the single endpoint your agents use for all reads and actions.

Streams Changes

Pushes real-time state change notifications to connected agents over WebSocket, eliminating the need to poll.

Executes Actions

Accepts typed action requests from agents and drives them into target applications on their behalf.

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How to Run the Daemon

Running as a Windows Service is the standard production mode. The service starts automatically at boot, runs in the background without a logged-in user session, and restarts itself on failure. After installation, the daemon registers itself as NSPDaemon and you manage it with standard PowerShell commands:
See Run as a Windows Service for full lifecycle management, recovery settings, and user account configuration.

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In Foreground Mode (Development)

For local development and debugging, run the daemon directly in your terminal. This prints logs to stdout and lets you use Ctrl+C to stop cleanly:

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CLI Reference

axon-daemon.exe accepts the following commands:

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Confirm the Daemon Is Running

Once the daemon is up, call the health endpoint to confirm it is responding:
A healthy daemon returns:
The tracked_processes field tells you how many applications the daemon is actively monitoring. If auth_enabled is true, all API requests require an X-Substrate-Key header — see Authentication for how to generate and use your key.

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Log Output

By default, the daemon writes logs to stdout in structured JSON format, which is easy to ingest into log aggregators:
For human-readable output during development, switch the log format to text in your axon.toml:
You can also set AXON_LOGGING__FORMAT=text as an environment variable without editing the config file. Environment variables always take priority over axon.toml values.