SerenObservatory

The per-node management plane for your Seren cluster. One small service on each box that knows how to start, stop, check, and report on the things running there - so the cluster head can drive the whole constellation without SSH-ing into every node by hand.

You don't usually talk to the observatory directly. It's a plane, not a destination: SerenLodestar (the cluster head) talks to it, aggregates every node's observatory into one API, and serves the dashboard. The observatory is the thing on the far end that actually does the work on each machine.

It's manifest-driven - it reads ~/.seren/services/*.json to learn what lives on its node, and dispatches lifecycle actions from there. Drop a new service manifest, the observatory knows about it. No code change. (An install under a Starwright root reads <root>/manifests/*.json instead - see server.manifests_dir under Config.)

Read this first: the safety interlock

The observatory can restart services and trigger a sudoers-backed reboot. That's a lot of power for an HTTP endpoint, so the observatory treats its auth token as a safety interlock, not a convenience knob.

• The token lives in ~/.seren/secrets.json (chmod 600) as {"observatory_token": "..."}, written by the installer when you pass --gen-token or --token (-GenToken / -Token on Windows), or by hand. It is not a config field - you won't find it in the yaml, on purpose. Putting it there would add a second, weaker path to the one thing that gates rebooting your hardware.
• The file's location can move (the token itself still can't): set SEREN_OBSERVATORY_SECRETS=/path/to/secrets.json in the environment, or server.secrets_path in the yaml. Env wins over the yaml; both win over the default ~/.seren/secrets.json. ~ is expanded. That's for per-install roots (~/seren/<install name>/...), so two clusters on one host never share a token. Same rules for the moved file: {"observatory_token": "..."}, chmod 600.
• Until that token exists, the observatory fails CLOSED on anything that mutates. Reads stay open (so monitoring still works on a fresh node), but every start/stop/restart/reboot returns 503 until you've provisioned a token. An unprovisioned observatory on the network is never an open reboot-button.

So install it with a token, or write the file. Before that, the observatory is a read-only status reporter. After that, it's the full plane - and every mutating call needs Authorization: Bearer <token>.

This is also why the observatory binds 0.0.0.0 by default (the opposite of SerenMargin's localhost-only). It's meant to be reached across the trusted LAN by the cluster head. The interlock - not the bind address - is what keeps it safe.

Quick start

# From the shared setup scripts (installs from the GitHub release by default):
bash seren-observatory-setup.sh

# Want it to start on boot, too?
bash seren-observatory-setup.sh --service

# With a token, so the mutating endpoints come alive (written to ~/.seren/secrets.json):
bash seren-observatory-setup.sh --service --gen-token

# Or run it straight, zero config:
python -m seren_observatory

# Or with a config file:
cp seren-observatory.yaml.sample seren-observatory.yaml
python -m seren_observatory --config seren-observatory.yaml

Defaults: 0.0.0.0:7777. Reads ~/.seren/node.json and the service manifests in ~/.seren/services/.

Using it (the HTTP API)

Two endpoints are public (no token) so the cluster head can liveness-check a node before it's provisioned:

curl localhost:7777/api/v1/system/ping       # → {"ok": true}
curl localhost:7777/api/v1/system/version

Everything else needs the bearer token:

TOKEN=$(jq -r .observatory_token ~/.seren/secrets.json)   # or wherever SEREN_OBSERVATORY_SECRETS / server.secrets_path points

# What's on this node, and how's it doing?
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" localhost:7777/api/v1/system/node
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" localhost:7777/api/v1/system/services
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" localhost:7777/api/v1/system/health

# Drive a specific service (start/stop/restart/health/status/logs/manifest):
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -X POST localhost:7777/api/v1/service/llama/restart

There's a browsable info page at / and interactive docs at /docs (the description is public; calling anything from it still needs the token). Install a service and its lifecycle verbs are live on the next request - no restart, the manifest is read when the call arrives. The root page shows your auth state up front - "configured" or "DISABLED (no token)" - so you can see at a glance whether the interlock is armed.

Orchestrated services. llama, kokoro, whisper and comfy are started by Lodestar when someone needs them and stopped when nobody does, so between uses they are off on purpose. A manifest with "orchestrated": true (the node installer writes it for those four; an ensure that starts a service sets it too) reports idle instead of not_running: /system/health lists it under idle, stays ok, and the glance shows a grey "idle" chip with an "on demand" badge rather than a red one. Flip it by hand with POST /service/<name>/orchestrated {"orchestrated": true|false}.

What it logs (and where)

Every request is logged - timing, status, and full tracebacks on 500s - to both stderr (so journalctl catches it) and a rotating file at ~/seren-logs/observatory-requests.log (so you can read it without sudo). Auth rejections are logged too, which turns out to be the single most useful debug signal: "the dashboard is failing - is the token wrong, or is the route actually 500-ing?" The log tells you which.

Config

See seren-observatory.yaml.sample. It follows the Seren convention (same shape as SerenMemory and SerenMargin): a server: block, resolved --config → $SEREN_AGENT_CONFIG → ~/seren-observatory/seren-observatory.yaml → built-in defaults.

The yaml carries host/port, where the secrets file is - the token itself is not here (see the interlock section above) - and where the service manifests are. Fields you might touch:

• server.host (default 0.0.0.0 - the cluster-plane bind)
• server.port (default 7777)
• server.secrets_path (default ~/.seren/secrets.json)
• server.manifests_dir (default ~/.seren/services) - this install's roster: the observatory lists, starts and reclaims the *.json in it. Starwright sets it to <install root>/manifests so two installs on one host keep separate rosters. When it's moved, ~/.seren/services is still read too, as the box roster: the GPU daemons the node installers write there (whisper, llama, kokoro) belong to the box, so every install's observatory on the host lists them, and reclaim from any of them stops them - the GPU is the box's. A name in both rosters is the install's. Each manifest in /api/v1/system/services carries _roster: "install" or "box". node.json doesn't move either: a node is one box, so that stays at ~/.seren/node.json.

Env vars override file values for systemd: AGENT_HOST/AGENT_PORT, or the namespaced SEREN_AGENT_HOST/SEREN_AGENT_PORT; SEREN_OBSERVATORY_SECRETS for the secrets file; SEREN_OBSERVATORY_MANIFESTS for the roster. ~ is expanded in both paths. The root page and the fail-closed 503 both name the secrets file the observatory actually resolved, so if they point somewhere you didn't expect, that's the path it's reading. The root page names the roster directory the same way - if a service you installed isn't listed, check that line first.

Deployment

The shared setup-observatory-service.{sh,ps1} wrappers install the observatory as a systemd service (Linux), a launchd observatory (macOS), or an NSSM service (Windows) - all running as your user so paths and caches resolve to your profile. One node, one observatory, runs on boot. The cluster head finds it across the LAN.

What this is part of

SerenObservatory is a piece of Seren - a fully self-hosted local AI companion stack. It's the per-node muscle: the cluster head (SerenLodestar) is the brain that aggregates and decides; the observatory is what actually touches each machine. You run one on every node in your cluster.

On its own it's a tidy, auth-gated, manifest-driven service manager for a single box. As part of the constellation, it's how the whole thing becomes one cluster instead of a pile of separate machines.

Rip it and win.