.agents/memory/2026-02-23-auto-update-observability-plan.md

2026-02-23 Session Notes

Auto-Update Observability Plan

Nicholai provided a comprehensive plan to add observability to Signet's auto-update system. The daemon currently has full update mechanics (GitHub/npm checks, package manager invocation, timer) but zero observability—errors vanish into logs, agents never know when Signet is outdated, and /api/status is blind to update state.

Root causes identified: autoInstall defaults to false (users never see updates), all update state is trapped as module-scoped bindings in daemon.ts (inaccessible to other modules), getDaemonVersion() silently returns "0.0.0" on failure, package manager fallback order favors npm over bun (misaligned with project standards), and the diagnostics system lacks an update health domain.

Implementation Strategy

The plan calls for extracting the update system to a dedicated update-system.ts module (~350 LOC) following the singleton pattern used by llm.ts and db-accessor.ts. The module will export getUpdateState() and getUpdateSummary() for read-only access from anywhere in the daemon.

Update status will be surfaced in the session-start hook via handleSessionStart in hooks.ts, making it visible to agents during session initialization. A new categorizeUpdateError() helper will translate raw errors (rate limits, network failures, permission denied, etc.) into actionable messages.

API surface will expand: /api/status gains an update field with version info and error state, /health adds two booleans (updateAvailable, pendingRestart), and a new UpdateHealth domain joins diagnostics scoring.

Implementation Order

1. Extract update-system.ts from daemon.ts
2. Wire initUpdateSystem() in daemon main, update route handlers
3. Add categorizeUpdateError() helper
4. Add getUpdateSummary() and wire into handleSessionStart
5. Expand /api/status and /health endpoints (parallelizable)
6. Add UpdateHealth to diagnostics.ts (parallelizable)

The plan emphasized that extracting update-system.ts unblocks all downstream work. Verification includes typecheck, runtime endpoint testing, and error categorization scenarios.