docs/intent/04-surfaces/03-browser-desktop/17-processes.md

Processes

Key Ideas

  • Visible Runtime Work: users should see the processes Refine owns.
  • Actionable Status: process rows should explain state, owner, context, logs, and available controls.
  • Shared Supervisor Truth: the UI should reflect supervisor-managed state, not guess from browser state.
  • Scoped Loading: process views should load only when needed.

Purpose

The Processes surface exists to make runtime work inspectable. Refine launches daemons, target-app commands, agent turns, quality checks, imports, maintenance jobs, terminal sessions, and helpers. Users need to see those processes when diagnosing or supervising automation.

It answers: what is running, what owns it, what is it attached to, and what can I do about it?

Expected Role

Processes should appear under the system/node management area and should connect process state back to product concepts like Gaps, sessions, workflow, and target-app activity.

Current implementation details that matter to intent:

  • /api/processes exposes managed process state;
  • process rows can include owner, pid, state, label, details, output availability, resource labels, and actions;
  • chat, workflow, runner, target-app, and UI contexts should be surfaced where available;
  • process pause/resume controls affect background work and agents;
  • settings/processes views should avoid overfetching unrelated settings data.

Processes should be a debugging and supervision surface, not a hidden implementation detail.

Future Direction

Future process views should represent agent fleet execution: queues, claims, remote nodes, resource pressure, isolation, cancellation, retry, and provenance.

As Refine scales, process visibility should become one of the main ways people and agents understand the live orchestration layer.