serviceman

What problem does it solve?

Serviceman removes the friction of managing background services by giving you one consistent way to register and control daemons across Linux (systemd/OpenRC) and macOS (launchctl).

Core Features & Use Cases

• Cross-platform service management: Create, enable/disable, start/stop, restart, list, and view logs using the same workflow on supported init systems.
• Safe installation patterns: Clear separation between user login services (agent) and always-on system boot services (daemon) with sensible defaults per OS.
• Operational guardrails: Enforces the critical use of -- before the command and requires a valid --workdir (or --force) to prevent common runtime failures.
• Use case example: You have a Node.js API you want to run persistently on a server; add it once with the right daemon mode and manage lifecycle commands later without hand-authoring service files.

Quick Start

Run serviceman to install your service in the background by using the command: serviceman add --name 'myapp' --workdir ~/srv/myapp -- ~/bin/myapp serve