TypeScript SDK Daemon Client

Overview

packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/ is the TypeScript SDK’s daemon client. It is the canonical way to connect to a running qwen serve daemon from any TypeScript / JavaScript host (the CLI’s own TUI adapter, channel bot backends, the VS Code IDE companion, custom scripts, and server-side web backends). All other adapters depend on it.

The package layout is intentionally small:

The walkthrough example is at ../examples/daemon-client-quickstart.md; this doc is the architecture and contract reference.

Responsibilities

• Provide one TypeScript method per daemon HTTP route.
• Stamp the bearer token + X-Qwen-Client-Id correctly on every request.
• Compose per-call timeouts with caller-supplied AbortSignal (without killing long-lived SSE).
• Stream and parse SSE frames into typed DaemonEvents.
• Track lastSeenEventId per session so reconnects replay correctly.
• Expose a device-flow auth surface that polls at daemon-supplied intervals.

Architecture

DaemonClient (DaemonClient.ts)

Constructor:

new DaemonClient({
  baseUrl: string,                  // default 'http://127.0.0.1:4170'
  token?: string,
  fetch?: typeof globalThis.fetch,  // injectable for tests
  fetchTimeoutMs?: number,          // 0 = disabled; default DEFAULT_FETCH_TIMEOUT_MS
});

Method groups (every method takes an optional clientId to stamp X-Qwen-Client-Id):

fetchWithTimeout

Every request goes through fetchWithTimeout. Critical details:

• Body read is inside the timer scope. Previous implementations cleared the timer when headers arrived; if a proxy stalled mid-body, await res.json() could hang past fetchTimeoutMs. The current shape passes the body-reading code as a callback so the timer covers both header arrival AND body consumption.
• perCallTimeoutMs lets a single call override the client-wide default. The most visible caller is restartMcpServer: the SDK uses MCP_RESTART_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_MS = 330_000 (5 min 30s). The daemon’s own MCP_RESTART_TIMEOUT_MS is exactly 300s; if the client matched that value, a restart that completes near 300s could lose the race while the daemon serializes and sends its structured response, causing a false-positive TimeoutError. The extra 30s covers serialization, network transfer, and decode on both sides. Callers that need a tighter budget can pass timeoutMs; passing 0 disables the timeout.
• AbortSignal.any composes caller-supplied signal with the per-call timer signal, so caller cancellation and per-call timeout both abort cleanly.
• AbortController + cancellable setTimeout instead of AbortSignal.timeout() so fast-resolving requests do not leak pending timers on the event loop. Timer is cleared in finally.
• Streaming endpoints (subscribeEvents) bypass the timeout — long-lived SSE must not be killed by it.

DaemonSessionClient (DaemonSessionClient.ts)

Binds one session and automatically tracks lastSeenEventId so SSE replay and reconnect work without extra caller state.

class DaemonSessionClient {
  readonly client: DaemonClient;
  readonly session: DaemonSession;
  readonly state: DaemonSessionState;
  private lastSeenEventId: number | undefined;
 
  static createOrAttach(client, req?): Promise<DaemonSessionClient>;
  static load(client, sessionId, req?): Promise<DaemonSessionClient>;
  static resume(client, sessionId, req?): Promise<DaemonSessionClient>;
 
  events(opts?: DaemonSessionSubscribeOptions): AsyncIterable<DaemonEvent>;
  prompt(req: PromptRequest): Promise<PromptResult>;
  cancel(): Promise<void>;
  respondToPermission(...): Promise<PermissionResponse>;
  setModel(modelServiceId): Promise<SetModelResult>;
  heartbeat(): Promise<HeartbeatResult>;
  setMetadata(metadata): Promise<SessionMetadataResult>;
  close(): Promise<void>;
}

events() proxies client.subscribeEvents with resume: true by default — it passes the tracked lastSeenEventId so reconnects replay from where the previous subscription stopped. Every yielded event bumps lastSeenEventId.

DaemonAuthFlow (DaemonAuthFlow.ts)

class DaemonAuthFlow {
  start(opts: { providerId, ... }): Promise<DaemonAuthFlowHandle>;
}
interface DaemonAuthFlowHandle {
  deviceFlowId: string;
  providerId: string;
  expiresAt: string;
  verificationUrl: string;
  userCode: string;
  awaitCompletion(opts?): Promise<DaemonAuthDeviceFlowState>;
  cancel(): Promise<void>;
}

awaitCompletion() polls GET /workspace/auth/device-flow/:id at the daemon-supplied intervalMs until the flow becomes authorized, failed, or cancelled. It is lazily constructed via client.auth so clients that never touch auth incur no allocation cost.

parseSseStream (sse.ts)

Turns a Response.body (ReadableStream<Uint8Array>) into AsyncIterable<DaemonEvent>. Handles:

• LF and CRLF framing.
• Buffer overflow cap (16 MiB) — defensive bound against a daemon emitting a single absurdly large frame.
• AbortSignal wiring — abort closes the stream and the iterator.
• Comment-only frames and unknown event types (passed through as DaemonEvent; SDK consumers narrow downstream via asKnownDaemonEvent).

Types (types.ts)

Notable exports: DaemonCapabilities, DaemonSession ({ sessionId, workspaceCwd, attached, clientId?, createdAt? }), DaemonEvent, DaemonSessionState, DaemonSessionContextStatus, DaemonSessionSupportedCommandsStatus, PermissionResponse, PromptResult, HeartbeatResult, SetModelResult, SessionMetadataResult, plus MCP / agent / memory / auth result types.

Workflow

Create-or-attach + first prompt

Subscribe with replay

Device-flow auth

qwen-oauth is the legacy v1 provider identifier. Qwen OAuth free tier was discontinued on 2026-04-15, so new clients should prefer a currently supported auth provider when one is available.

State & Lifecycle

• DaemonClient is connection-less; nothing happens at construction. Every method opens a fresh fetch.
• DaemonSessionClient retains lastSeenEventId across events() invocations; reconnects replay from the last seen.
• DaemonAuthFlow is lazy — client.auth constructs it on first access.
• The SSE iterator closes when (a) the daemon ends the stream, (b) AbortSignal.abort() fires, (c) the consumer breaks out of the for await, or (d) the buffer overflow cap (16 MiB) is hit.

Dependencies

• globalThis.fetch (Node 18+ built-in, browser, undici, etc.). Injectable per DaemonClient for tests.
• Native AbortController / AbortSignal.any / setTimeout.
• No transitive dependencies on @qwen-code/qwen-code-core or @qwen-code/acp-bridge — the SDK package is fully decoupled so external consumers do not pull in the daemon’s internals.

ui/* subpackage (#4328  + #4353 )

The SDK also exports packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/ui/, a host-neutral set of primitives that turn daemon events into transcript blocks:

• normalizeDaemonEvent(evt) maps the 43 known daemon wire events into 37 UI-friendly DaemonUiEventType values; unmodeled or malformed events normalize to debug.
• createDaemonTranscriptState() plus reduceDaemonTranscriptEvents(state, events) projects UI events into DaemonTranscriptBlock[].
• createDaemonTranscriptStore() wraps subscribe / dispatch.
• render.ts / terminal.ts provide HTML and terminal baseline renderers, while toolPreview.ts produces tool-call summaries.
• Selectors include selectTranscriptBlocksOrderedByEventId, selectPendingPermissionBlocks, selectCurrentTool, selectApprovalMode, selectToolProgress, selectSubagentChildBlocks, formatMissedRange, and formatBlockTimestamp.
• Public constants include DAEMON_PLAN_TOOL_CALL_ID.
• conformance.ts contains the cross-host consistency test suite.

The first production consumer is packages/webui/src/daemon/ through React’s DaemonSessionProvider. See 14-cli-tui-adapter.md for the detailed architecture, glossary, selector table, and relationship to the legacy DaemonTuiAdapter.

The subpackage is exported from the @qwen-code/sdk/daemon subpath. Existing code that does import { DaemonClient } is unaffected.

Configuration

Caveats & Known Limits

• fetchTimeoutMs is per-call, not connection-level. Long body reads share the timer. A daemon that streams responses must override per-call or set the timeout to 0.
• SSE bypasses the fetch timeout — long-lived SSE connections are not killed by fetchTimeoutMs. Use AbortSignal for caller-controlled cancellation.
• parseSseStream buffer cap is 16 MiB as a defensive bound. A single frame larger than this aborts the iterator (the daemon never legitimately emits such frames).
• asKnownDaemonEvent returns undefined for unrecognized event types. SDK consumers must handle this branch rather than assuming the union is exhaustive; that is the forward-compatibility contract. Unrecognized events increment DaemonSessionViewState.unrecognizedKnownEventCount.
• client_evicted, slow_client_warning, stream_error are not in the replay ring. Reconnecting after eviction picks up from the daemon’s ring; you will not see the eviction frame again.
• DaemonClient does not auto-retry. Network failures surface as rejections; reconnect / replay strategy is the caller’s responsibility (DaemonSessionClient.events() makes replay easy but reconnect is still per-call).

References

• packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/DaemonClient.ts
• packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/DaemonSessionClient.ts
• packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/DaemonAuthFlow.ts
• packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/sse.ts
• packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/events.ts
• packages/sdk-typescript/src/daemon/types.ts
• End-to-end walkthrough: ../examples/daemon-client-quickstart.md.