Agents

Tyr distinguishes between daemons (the tyrd process itself) and discovered agents (AI processes observed by a daemon).

Daemons

A daemon is a single tyrd instance running on a host. It has:

Field	Example	Notes
`agent_id`	`4f27e3c1-ab89-...`	Assigned by server on first enrollment
`name`	`alice-laptop`	Human label passed via `--name`
`client_cert`	PEM blob	Issued by internal CA during enrollment
`last_seen`	timestamp	Heartbeat every 30s (configurable)
`kernel`	`6.8.0-51-generic`	Reported on connect
`capabilities`	`{lsm, tls_capture, enforce}`	Feature flags supported by this agent

Daemons authenticate over mTLS on the gRPC channel. A daemon whose cert is revoked can no longer stream.

Discovered agents

When tyrd sees an AI process on its host (by fingerprint — binary path, cmdline, env markers), it registers a discovered agent:

Field	Example
`id` (uuid)	`a1b2c3d4-...`
`daemon_agent_id`	parent daemon
`agent_type`	`cursor` / `copilot` / `claude-code` / `autogen` / …
`display_name`	overrideable in the UI
`pid` (live)	active PID if currently running
`process_signature`	hash of binary + cmdline pattern
`first_seen`	timestamp

The goal: you don’t enroll “Cursor” — Tyr finds it and gives you a handle to attach policies to.

Unregistered-agent policy

When tyrd sees a new process that doesn’t match any known agent_type, what should happen? Configured by unregistered_agents in tyrd.yaml:

Value	Behavior
`audit`	(default) Let it run, record events, flag for review. Safe default.
`quarantine`	Apply a strict base policy until an admin approves or assigns an overlay.
`deny`	Hard block execution entirely — only classified agents can run.

See Configuration for the full list of fields.

Heartbeats and reconnects

Heartbeat interval: 30 s default (heartbeat_interval_s in config).
A daemon last_seen > 90s ago is shown as stale in the UI.
Re-connect is automatic with exponential backoff.
During a disconnect, events are buffered to disk (buffer_size_mb, default 500 MB) and replayed on reconnect.

Listing and filtering

tyr agent list                     # all daemons
tyr agent list --include-archived  # include soft-deleted

# Future — today via UI
tyr discovered-agent list          # all AI processes observed

Deletion

Deleting a daemon removes its certificate and all its discovered-agent records.
Events from that daemon remain for retention purposes.
A daemon on the wire when its record is deleted will be rejected on next heartbeat and can re-enroll with a fresh token.

→ Next: Policies · AI detection