sayfirstd — the operator surface

This distribution is the command the operator of a daemon of this repository types. It inspects; it starts nothing.

sayfirstd plugins list --config /etc/sayfirst/plugins.toml
sayfirstd whoami --socket /run/sayfirst/daemon.sock --mode system --daemon-user sayfirst
sayfirstd status --socket /run/sayfirst/daemon.sock --mode system --daemon-user sayfirst
sayfirstd conformance replay --socket allow=/run/conformance/allow.sock

whoami and status take --socket as an option: given none, a per-user profile is looked for at the per-user default address — the one a per-user daemon given no address serves at, sayfirst-daemon up --quickstart included — so sayfirstd status alone asks that daemon. A system profile always names its socket and the account the daemon runs as, as the two lines above do for a system daemon running as sayfirst. Without --mode system --daemon-user, a profile is per-user: it expects the daemon to run as the account asking, and a system daemon at that address is refused as server_not_the_daemon_principal before a byte is sent (exit 4).

The three names

The distribution is sayfirstd, the import package is sayfirstd, and the console script is sayfirstd. One name in all three forms, held by tests/test_client_distribution_names.py against the [project] tables and against the source tree.

The distribution sayfirst-cli, the import package sayfirst_cli and the console script sayfirst were claimed here until 2026-09-05. Two repositories claimed them, and the operator settled it: in all three forms they belong to the product command-line interface, and are not published from this repository. Nothing had been published under either claim (article 0), so the collision was a fact about two source trees and is now closed in both.

sayfirst remains the project's public name wherever it names the product — article 0, TRADEMARKS.md, the contract's attribute namespace, the sibling distributions sayfirst-contract, sayfirst-control-plane, sayfirst-conformance and sayfirst-testing. Only the three claims moved.

Why sayfirstd

The conventional Unix shape: the daemon and the commands that inspect it share one binary. Article 6's whoami, article 7's status and article 8's plugins list all ask the daemon about itself, so they belong with it.

What starts the daemon

Not this. sayfirst-daemon serve, from the sayfirst-control-plane distribution, starts it. The two are not yet one binary because folding serve in would make this distribution depend on the server it inspects, and article 14 points the dependency the other way: this package depends on sayfirst-contract and on nothing else of this repository, which packages/cli/tests/test_plugins_list.py holds. A remote operator forwards a socket over SSH and inspects a daemon on a host where this wheel is the only one installed (docs/deployment.md); a fold would put the whole server in that install.

What it answers, and what it forwards

plugins list is answered here: it reports configured selections against discovered package metadata and against a recorded composition, and it claims no provider is active that bootstrap would refuse. whoami, status and conformance replay are handed whole to sayfirst-contract, which implements them, so their parsers and exit codes stay in one place.

status reads the daemon's own account of itself over the same verified connection whoami uses: the integrity grade of article 7 with its basis and the interval it is re-evaluated on, the active privacy provider of article 11, and whether evidence is being delivered. Each of those has a value for "the daemon did not report it", and the command renders that value rather than a plausible one (article 2).