serviceman

name	serviceman
description	Deploy and manage system services with serviceman. Use when adding, checking, or managing daemons on Linux (systemd/OpenRC) or macOS (launchctl).

serviceman Skill

Install Check

command -v serviceman || curl -sS https://webi.sh/serviceman | sh
source ~/.config/envman/PATH.env

Critical Rules

1. Never sudo serviceman — it sudo's internally. Running as root breaks user-context paths.
2. -- is required before the command — without it, command flags bleed into serviceman's parser.
3. --workdir must exist at add-time (or pass --force).

Add a Service

Auto-detection is safe. Use --daemon for always-on system boot services, --agent for user login session services (not always-on).

serviceman add --name 'myapp' --workdir ~/srv/myapp -- ~/bin/myapp serve

Output and Exit Codes

• Informational output (what serviceman is doing) goes to stderr
• list output goes to stderr — capture with serviceman list 2>&1
• Exit 0 = success; non-zero = error

List Managed Services

# Show serviceman-managed services only (default)
serviceman list --daemon

# Show all services (not just serviceman-managed)
serviceman list --all --daemon

Common Operations

# Restart
serviceman restart myapp --daemon

# View logs
serviceman logs myapp

# Disable (stop + remove from boot)
serviceman disable myapp --daemon

sudoers for Passwordless Operation

# /etc/sudoers.d/serviceman
%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/install
# OpenRC
%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/rc-service
%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/rc-update
# systemd
%wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/systemctl

install handles file placement and can be NOPASSWD. rc-service, rc-update, and systemctl control running services and require sudo but can also be NOPASSWD.

Manager Detection

• --agent — user login session; only runs while logged in (macOS default)
• --daemon — system boot service; always-on, survives logout (Linux default)

Auto-detection is safe for most deployments.