Local Service Autostart

Principle: Remediate offline local services programmatically

When an AI agent depends on a local service (Ollama, Docker, PostgreSQL, Redis, etc.) and the service is offline or unreachable, the agent should start the service programmatically and retry the operation. This is operational work (typically one command), not a blocking issue requiring human intervention.

Do not report offline services as blockers or ask the user to start them manually. That violates the agent-as-operator principle: the agent is responsible for keeping operational dependencies running, within scope of already-installed services.

Detection

Common error patterns indicating an offline service:

• ConnectionError, Connection refused, Connection timeout
• Failed to connect to <service>, Cannot connect to daemon
• Port <N> is not listening, Service unavailable
• Daemon not running, Service offline
• ECONNREFUSED, EHOSTUNREACH, ENETUNREACH

Remediation pattern

Step 1: Detect — catch the connection error or verify service is offline via a health check (e.g., curl, nc, or language-specific client library).

Step 2: Start — invoke the service startup command appropriate to your OS and environment. Examples:

Step 3: Wait — allow the service time to initialize. Typical values:

• Ollama: ~5 seconds
• Docker Desktop: ~30 seconds
• PostgreSQL: ~2–5 seconds
• Redis: ~1 second

Step 4: Verify — run the health check command and confirm the service is responding.