swamp serve daemon enable has no account/scope gate. It writes the launchd/systemd unit, forwards --auth-mode into the unit's argv, and reports success. The gate then fires inside the detached child on every start, so the daemon crash-loops with an authentication error the user never sees on their terminal. The command's own documented example is the failing invocation.

Where (source)

src/cli/commands/serve.ts:486-510 — daemonEnableCommand.action(). No requireAuthenticated, no requireScope; it resolves the service mode, calls scheduler.enable(...), and renders success at :509.
src/cli/commands/serve.ts:279-281 — collectServeExtraArgs forwards --auth-mode into extraArgs, which is baked into the unit.
src/cli/commands/serve.ts:960-963 — the gate, reached only when the daemon process actually runs serve.

src/cli/commands/serve.ts:482-485 — the documented example:

swamp serve daemon enable --cert-file cert.pem --key-file key.pem --auth-mode token

Repro

Not executed here, because running it installs a real launchd/systemd unit on the host. The path is simple to confirm by inspection, and equally simple to confirm live on a throwaway machine:

# with no swamp-club credentials present
swamp serve daemon enable --auth-mode token --port 8080
# -> reports success

# the daemon then fails on every start; visible only in the service log:
#   Error: swamp serve is a team feature that requires a free swamp-club.com account.
launchctl print gui/$(id -u)/<service label>     # macOS
journalctl -u swamp-serve                        # linux

Compare running the same configuration in the foreground, which fails immediately and visibly:

swamp serve --auth-mode token --admins user:alice --no-schedule
# -> Error: swamp serve is a team feature that requires a free swamp-club.com account.

(That foreground behavior I did verify directly.)

Two amplifiers

System-mode units run as a different user. AuthRepository resolves its config dir from SWAMP_HOME / XDG_CONFIG_HOME / HOME (paths.ts:284-300). A system-mode unit running as root reads root's config, not the invoking user's, so a perfectly logged-in operator installs a daemon that cannot see their credentials and fails the gate anyway.
SWAMP_API_KEY is not inherited. launchd and systemd units do not inherit the invoking shell's environment, so collective-token operators fail identically unless the key is written into the unit explicitly.

Both mean the gate can fail in the daemon even when it passes interactively, which makes the failure look like a swamp bug rather than a missing account.

Impact

The user gets a success message and a service that never runs. Nothing on the terminal indicates authentication is involved; the diagnosis requires knowing to read the service log. For the system-mode and env-var cases above, the same command succeeds in the foreground and fails as a daemon, which is a genuinely confusing signal.

Expected

Run the same requireAuthenticated / requireScope checks in daemon enable, before writing the unit, using the resolved --auth-mode. Failing at install time is the whole point of an install-time command.
For system mode, warn when the unit will run as a user whose config dir differs from the invoking user's, since the credential will not be visible there.
If the daemon does start and hit the gate, that failure should be distinguishable in the service log from a crash (it currently exits like any other error).

Environment

Source main @ 10943ef. Gate shipped in a519305 (#1934), 2026-07-23; installed stable 20260722.210030.0-sha.7ff1e2f0 predates it, so this is latent until the next release.
macOS 14 (launchd) and Linux (systemd) both affected by inspection.

02Bog Flow

Closed

7/24/2026, 10:45:19 PM

No activity in this phase yet.

03Sludge Pulse

stack72 commented 7/24/2026, 10:45:18 PM

@magistr Thanks for the detailed reports — we appreciate the work you're putting in to make the tool better. Fixes are in #1956 and will be released shortly.

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