Daycare

Local-first, plugin-driven multi-agent runtime.

What It Is

Daycare runs persistent agents behind connectors like Telegram and WhatsApp, with schedulers (cron + heartbeat), permissions, sandboxed shell/process tools, and pluggable providers/tools.

The core lives in packages/daycare. A monitoring UI lives in packages/daycare-dashboard.

Repository Layout

• packages/daycare - CLI, engine, plugins, prompts, skills
• packages/daycare-dashboard - Next.js dashboard
• doc - concepts, providers, connectors, internals

Requirements

• Node.js 22+
• Yarn 1.x (yarn@1.22.22 in this repo)

Quick Start

yarn install

# Interactive onboarding (pick provider/plugin)
yarn dev add

# Start engine
yarn dev start

# Check status
yarn dev status

yarn dev in this repo sets DAYCARE_ROOT_DIR=~/.dev, so local development state is written under ~/.dev.

If you run the CLI directly from packages/daycare without DAYCARE_ROOT_DIR, default state lives under ~/.daycare.

CLI Commands

Use the dev CLI runner:

yarn dev --help

Common commands:

• yarn dev start - start engine
• yarn dev status - show engine status
• yarn dev add - add provider or plugin (interactive)
• yarn dev remove - remove provider or plugin (interactive)
• yarn dev providers - select default provider
• yarn dev plugins load <pluginId> [instanceId] - load plugin
• yarn dev plugins unload <instanceId> - unload plugin
• yarn dev auth set <id> <key> <value> - set auth credential
• yarn dev doctor - provider health checks
• yarn dev event <type> [payload] - send engine event via local socket
• yarn dev add -> Plugin -> Dashboard - enable bundled dashboard server

Configuration And Data

The runtime uses:

• settings.json - engine/providers/plugins config
• auth.json - credentials
• daycare.sock - local engine socket

By default these live under:

• ~/.dev when using this repo's root yarn dev script
• ~/.daycare otherwise

See doc/internals/config.md and doc/internals/auth.md for exact schema/behavior.

Development

yarn build        # build daycare package
yarn lint         # biome check (format + lint)
yarn lint:fix     # biome check --write
yarn test         # run workspace tests
yarn typecheck    # typecheck workspaces
yarn release      # release daycare-cli (no package-lock, test/build, tag, publish, rollback)
yarn dashboard    # run dashboard on :7331

You can also run workspace-local scripts:

yarn workspace daycare dev --help
yarn workspace daycare test
yarn workspace daycare typecheck

Providers, Plugins, Tools

Daycare ships with built-in provider integrations plus plugins for connectors, search/fetch, memory/database, shell/process tooling, and more.

Use interactive onboarding to see current options in your checkout:

yarn dev add

Reference docs:

• doc/providers/README.md
• doc/concepts/networking.md
• doc/concepts/sandboxes.md
• doc/concepts/agents.md

Documentation

• doc/README.md - docs index
• doc/concepts - architecture and runtime behavior
• doc/providers - provider setup
• doc/connectors - connector setup
• doc/internals - implementation notes

License

MIT