Kent server

Kent runs all its work through a local server process. Frontends are clients: TUI, desktop app, headless runs, and other local integrations all need the server to be running. To start the server, run kent serve.

See connection configuration for address selection and session resume behavior.

The server owns all long-running work: sessions, projects, runtime orchestration, background shells, tool execution, tasks, workflows, and storage.

Why? Because this:

Gives ability to fully isolate work on another machine, VM, or container. See Sandboxing for remote/container setup.
Drastically reduces resource consumption
Allows agents to work asynchronously during workflows.
Allows spawning agents on schedule and periodically.
Uses only about 25 MB of RAM while idle.

Background service

The easiest way to use Kent locally without manually running the server is via the system service:

kent service status
kent service install
kent service restart
kent service stop
kent service start
kent service uninstall

Install the service once, then restart it after updates.

Provider environment

See API keys and background services for provider credentials and the server’s .env file.

Backends

OS	Service
macOS	LaunchAgent
Linux / WSL2	`systemd --user`
Windows	Windows Service

On Windows, uninstalling the service stops the server.
Linux headless machines may need lingering enabled so the server survives logout loginctl enable-linger "$USER".